Damage Undone
by EBStarr
Summary: COMPLETE. Cordano-Marsan, AU season 8. As Mark is haunted by his past with Susan, Elizabeth begins to wonder about a future with Romano.
1. Separate, Not Alone

**Damage Undone**

**Disclaimer: **_ER_ and its denizens aren't mine.  They belong to sadistic people who like to chop people's limbs off for fun.

**Spoilers: **None (after s8).

**Feedback: **Any and every comment welcome!

**Archive: **Just ask me first.

**Summary: **Away from each other on the night of Ella's overdose, Mark and Elizabeth find comfort in the people who love them the most.

Our story begins an hour or so after "Damage is Done" ends.  Time: Spring 2002.  Ella: comatose.  Rachel: snotty brat.  Mark and Elizabeth: mindlessly hanging on to patently doomed relationship.  Carter and Susan: ditto.

**Chapter 1.****  Separate, Not Alone**

Susan sighed, making the surface of her tiny cup of bitter Turkish coffee into a miniature whirlpool.  How much he had gone through.  A divorce, a tumor, one daughter heading straight for a juvenile correction facility and the other very possibly heading nowhere ever again.  And his wife!  A handful, if she'd ever seen one.  What had either of them been thinking…?

—Heading into dangerous territory, Lewis.  You have your boyfriend, and he comes prepackaged with less baggage, more hair, and a prettier face.  That better not have been jealousy talking just now.

The coffee scalded her mouth.  She was just spitting it back ungracefully into the teacup when the door opened to reveal heavy blonde curls and a petite, stylishly clothed body.

"Rachel!" Susan exclaimed without thinking, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.  "It's past midnight!"

The expression on Rachel's face was not unfamiliar to Susan, who had spent a good deal of time in her own childhood climbing in and out of her bedroom window.  "Uh… hi, Dr. Lewis," she said.  "I was just… I mean, my dad is with the baby, they're busy, and I just thought I'd come here on my own."

"This café is a life-saver," Susan agreed noncommittally.  "The only good coffee you can get this late at night."

"I was going to get something to eat, actually."

Susan nodded.  "Does your dad know where you are?"

"I didn't want to bother him," she hedged before going up to the counter to buy a big chocolate cookie and hot cocoa.

_Didn't you used to be cute? _Susan wondered as she fumbled in her bag for her cellphone.

After she finished the call, she put on a friendly smile and waved Rachel over to her own table.  Reluctant to be completely uncivil at a time like this, Rachel accepted the invitation with grudging silence and sat across from Susan with a sour face.  

Mark arrived within twenty minutes, taking Rachel by surprise.  When she saw her father and understood Susan's motives, she shot a glance of pure evil across the table.

But Susan had only concern for Mark.  His face was drawn and almost lifeless.  He could hardly look at Rachel as he approached them.  "Hi," he said quietly to Susan.

"I'm sorry to call you away from the baby," Susan said, "but I thought you might need to know where she was."

"It's good that you called," he said.  "And Ella's got Elizabeth with her, so it's all right."  He looked at her, almost pleading for comfort, and his voice broke.  "Susan—"

"God, Dad, I didn't run away or anything," Rachel interrupted, reminding them of her presence.  "I just needed something to eat besides stupid hospital food…  I didn't mean to make you worry."

"All right," Mark said curtly.  He slid into the booth, next to Susan, leaning his head back in fatigue.  Rachel flounced off to the ladies' room.

"How's Ella?" Susan asked softly when they were alone.

"She hasn't woken yet," he said, his voice cracking again.  "There's nothing we can do now."

She silently watched as he searched his exhausted mind for words to form his next sentence.  "We're helpless now," he said.  "But we weren't when Rachel was bringing home cigarettes and condoms and drugs…"

There were tears in his eyes.  Susan said, "You've done your best, Mark.  It wasn't your fault."

"I could have prevented this," he insisted.  "I could have been a better father to Rachel.  I could have _done something."_

She put a friendly hand on his shoulder, unable to express the sympathy that flooded her own eyes with tears.  His body was racked with almost invisible trembling that calmed at the touch of her hand, leaving him limp and defeated.  

Mark clasped her hand tightly, acknowledging that sympathy, but there was no comfort to be had in a touch tonight.  As they waited for Rachel to return, they held on to that inadequate connection and quietly, separately wept.

~

Romano climbed the stairs holding paper bags full to bursting with the Chinese food he and Lewis had bought.  He had picked it up from the restaurant because they wouldn't deliver to the hospital, and Susan didn't have a car.  Cautiously he stepped into the room where Ella was and asked softly, "Hello?"

There was only one person by Ella's side: Elizabeth, resting her forehead wearily on the bars, all alone.  He could see only the silhouette of her bent head and slumped back.  She didn't move, and Romano approached almost timidly.

He had no idea what he would do with the food, if she was asleep, but the rustling of the bags seemed to wake her.  She lifted her head.  "Mark?"

"Sorry, just the delivery guy," he said.  "We thought you might be too worried to leave and get food."

"I am.  I mean, we are."  She rubbed her forehead.  Her face was white and ghostly.  "Mark's other daughter disappeared somewhere.  He went to get her, not food."

"Well, if you're hungry, I'll leave these with you."

She shrugged without looking at him.  "I don't know how much I can keep down.  Stay – you can have some."

He hesitated a few seconds.  It seemed rude of him to barge in where there was so much pain, especially when so many ulterior motives clouded his judgment – and yet – she needed someone there with her, it didn't matter who.  Finders, keepers.  "All right," he said.  "Smells too good to resist."

Romano started working on the lo mein, but Lizzie only took half-assed nibbles at white rice.  Eventually she said dully, "Thank you for getting rid of Babcock today."

"He shouldn't have been there," Romano said gruffly.  He had felt overwhelmingly, senselessly protective the instant he saw Elizabeth yelling at the man she knew for a murderer.  He wanted to smack the guy, but Elizabeth needed to be calmed down.  (Man, but that woman could screech!  He'd have smiled at this oddly endearing trait, if his throat didn't ache at the sight of her ravaged face.)

Elizabeth reached companionably over into the container he was holding to fish out a piece of broccoli.  Trying to swallow it, she coughed quietly.

He almost reached over to pat her back, but she waved him off.  "I'm fine.  My throat is parched, that's all."

"You're probably dehydrated," he said.  "There's water in here, if you want it."

He fished the bottle from the bottom of the paper bag and handed it to Elizabeth, who took it and immediately tilted her head back to take a long, greedy draught.  Unconsciously Romano watched the working of her throat as she swallowed eagerly.  He never got used to the magnetic attraction he felt when she was this close. 

"Thanks," she said, closing the bottle and placing it on the ground.  Her eyes met his, and he knew his expression had given him away.

Robert focused back on his lo mein.  For once he was determined to ignore that oft-recurring desire for her – at least tonight.  They ate for ten more minutes in pensive silence, until Elizabeth's gaze suddenly fell on the baby again.  "Where is he?" she whispered to herself.

The catch in her voice made his body weak with the urge to lean over and put his arms around her, but instead he reached over and touched the back of her hand in the most friendly, innocuous way he could.  There was nothing to say, and if she wanted easy platitudes like _it'll be okay, she could wait for her wet rag of a husband to come back._

Without warning Elizabeth leaned her head on his shoulder in a slow, natural, friendly movement, and all of his mental wisecracking powers disappeared.  He froze, wondering what to do and fighting the instinct to close both arms around her and make her forget all about her precious Mark.  She needed to be comforted – but he needed to kiss her, to make love to her, and he scarcely trusted himself just to be her friend.

Sensing the stiffness of his muscles, she shifted, molding her body against the shape of his.  Her shoulder nestled under his arm, her face against his chest.  He gulped shallow breaths and leaned his cheek on her head, putting one arm tentatively around her shoulders, relaxing slowly against her.

He had fallen asleep so many times, imagining this body in his arms – not generally with so many clothes on, admittedly, but the reality was both more earthy and more dreamlike than what he could conjure up himself.  The bones of her face sharp against his chest, the back of her hand brushing the outside of his thigh, the softness of curls brushing against his chin.

She was still feverish.  He could feel the perspiration lightly layered on her skin.  Every breath that left her mouth pooled in a tiny circle of liquid heat, burning through his scrubs to sear his flesh.  He closed his eyes, sitting very still, his breath slowly regulating to the rhythm of that burning heat on his chest.  They rested together in weary, simple companionship and watched Ella's motionless slumber.

A/N:  r/r s'il vous plait.  Positive or negative, whatever you want.


	2. The Aftermath

Thanks for all the reviews guys!  It's nice to hear, feeds my ego.  But feel free to criticize, too – tell me how to improve.  Rocket Launcher: Mahk alert.  Consider yourself warned.  And, hee.  You stole my line :)

**Chapter 2.****  The Aftermath**

Elizabeth woke up slowly.

She didn't open her eyes – she lingered, instead, in the cozy feeling of a healing sleep.  Her surroundings seeped into her senses with languid, delicious slowness.  She felt cold air on one side of her face, a cushioning warmth on the other.  Cotton-clothed flesh cradled her cheek, supported her body.  Unfamiliar, compact strength oddly accommodating to her shape.  Her hand was resting on ribs she could distinguish through cloth, and an arm stretched around her shoulders, encircling, embracing.

Romano.

Elizabeth jerked upright, gasping, and his arm fell down behind her, rustling past her back.  She'd, horrifyingly, had one arm flung over his stomach in an almost-embrace and she pulled her hand away, her face heating up furiously.

Her muscles felt liquidated, trembly.  She stared at the face beside her.  Bristly lashes, a strong nose, a jaw whose outline was craggy and severe, even in sleep.  All of his features belied the way it felt to lean against him in a vulnerable moment.__

—I slept with Romano, she noticed suddenly, almost giggling with odd, incongruous and totally inappropriate humor.

Then reality followed quickly upon that thought.  How could Mark have left her alone for – she checked her watch – five hours?  It was past four in the morning, he should be back by now.  He should never have left her to seek comfort from the man she had hated, like a comforting habit, for years.

Her anger spilled onto the innocent man still sleeping beside her.   What right did _he _have, anyway, coming in like that?  Comforting her?  He just reveled in it all, she supposed: his feisty little British protégée snuggling into his chest.  Needing him.

(It's not exactly his fault, a tiny, irritating voice reminded her.  Youfell into hisarms, remember?)

She blushed a little, to think of it – of how Robert must have seen it.  And panicked, pulling further away.  She could feel the imprint of wrinkled cloth on her cheek and held her hand to it, modestly, as she whispered, "Robert." 

He arched his back as if to stretch himself out and murmured, eyes still closed, "Lizzie."

Then he woke up.  Eyes flying open in realization.  "Lizzie!" he repeated, in a rather different tone.

"It's morning," she said, looking around at the slowly lightening PICU.  "I – you – we slept through the night."  Her eyes dared him even to think of gloating.

He took the dare.  "I must say, I always thought my first night with you would be slightly different," he said groggily.

"Honestly—" she started, flying into a fury intensified by her embarrassment.

His face was sheepish.  "I didn't mean to fall asleep," he muttered, giving her a guilty little look.  "I was going to wake you up after awhile."

She wasn't sure she believed him.  It would be just like Robert to jump at the chance to be near her, to hold her as long as he could.

"I feel so stupid right now," she muttered.

"I can't imagine why," said he, amusedly.

Gloating again.  Elizabeth mustered the most evil glare she possessed, and he didn't quake – any more than she ever quaked at his glares.  

But something else did flicker into his expression, and he looked down at Ella.  "She looks a little better."

Elizabeth nodded, trying to smile, her concern for her baby flooding back over her.  When even Romano was being nice to her, it only reminded her of everything terrible that was happening.  She reached down, stroking the round pale cheek.

"You seem better," he offered.  "Less tired."

That sounded suspiciously like another jab about falling asleep.  Elizabeth said icily, "I'm fine."  In fact, those few hours of sleep had chased away the fever and nausea.  She was only conscious of a vague ache in her head. 

"I, uh—"  He looked down at the paper bags laden with greasy, cold Chinese food and took a deep breath, almost as if he were nervous.  "I'll throw these out.  They shouldn't be in here anyway."

"Don't worry, you can't get in trouble for it," she said tiredly.  "You are the boss."

Robert quirked an eyebrow.  "I was starting to wonder if you knew that."

"I prefer to ignore it."

He departed with a little, sympathetic smile, leaving Elizabeth  to her daughter.  Trying to calm her swirling feelings, Elizabeth reached over the sidebars to lay her index finger in the tiny palm that lay face up and limp on the bed.  Usually, even in sleep, the little fingers would instinctively curl up at her touch and enclose her finger in a trusting grasp.  Today Ella's hand was still and unresponsive to hers.

 ~

The light pierced Rachel's eyelids, and she woke up to find herself still fully clothed, lying on top of the covers on her bed.  She remembered nothing of last night after one in the morning, when Dad finally got her into the car and drove her home.

Gingerly she lifted herself up and swung her legs over the bed, testing fatigued muscles.  It was nine o'clock.  Sweet.  No one expected her to go to school today.  It was pointless, anyway, and she was tired as hell.  All that emotional shit was kind of draining on her resources.

Rachel pulled her new cell phone out of her purse and sent a text message to Andy.  He'd get out of class somehow and amuse her for the morning, till she absolutely had to go visit the hospital.  Take her mind off things – in the way only Andy could.  Thank god for boys to distract her from all the boredom and dreariness in the world.

~

Mark approached the PICU, nervous.  His watch said four-thirty: he'd been away for five hours.

When he sidled into the room, the first thing he noticed was an odd, earthy, salty smell.  He sniffed a bit, wondering.

Elizabeth turned to see him, looking wan and, as he'd feared, chilly.  She was startlingly like her mother when she did that.

"How is she?" he asked, timidly approaching her.  There was an extra chair by the bed, but he didn't sit down, afraid to seem too cavalier about the whole situation.

She shook her head, mouth compressed tightly.  "I don't know."

Tentatively he touched Elizabeth's face.  "You seem tired," he said.  "Have you slept?"

At that question, Elizabeth flushed scarlet.  "Uh—I dozed off a few minutes."

"That's okay," he said, vaguely puzzled.  "You need your rest.  Are you feeling better?"

"I've been able to keep some food down," she said, her face still flushed.

"That's good.  Want me to take over?"

"I'm staying here," she insisted.  "Mark—"

He braced himself.

"You need to do something about Rachel," she said.

"I had no other choice—"

"This is exactly why she treats you like a doormat," she said impatiently, "it's because you _act like one.  You just sit back while she drags you away from your baby, last night of all nights – Ella might have had a seizure, Mark!  She might have __died while you were fetching Rachel from her precious Starbucks."_

This probably wasn't the right time to point out that it actually wasn't Starbucks, it was a Turkish café.  Mark stuttered and then managed the sentence, "Rachel's in pain, too."

"Oh, yes, the guilt is obviously killing her," Elizabeth said with immeasurable scorn.  "What took you so long?  You've been gone since eleven-thirty, Mark!"

"She was hungry," he said.  "I let her finish eating at the café."

"For four hours?"

"I drove her home and took a shower – and picked up some clothes for you."  He'd laid the sleepy Rachel on her bed as if she were still a child, tucked her in, turned off the alarm so she wouldn't need to go to school.  She stirred and murmured a name, Andrew, reminding him afresh how far she'd grown up without any help from him at all.

Elizabeth blinked and broke eye contact with him, turning back to look at Ella.  "That girl is going to keep leeching off your sympathy until there's nothing left," she said with icy softness.

"I _love her.  She's my daughter."_

Elizabeth's face registered irony at that word, _daughter, but she refrained from speaking.  After awhile, Mark sat down, resolving to be careful around Elizabeth for awhile.  No talking till the doctor came and they decided to extubate.  Then he obligingly volunteered to go get a breast pump for Elizabeth and went downstairs, relieved that he hadn't made Elizabeth mad again._

Only when he was well out of sight of his wife did he allow himself to feel a surge of loneliness.  They had hardly been able to celebrate when Ella drew that all-important first breath: a few kind words for each other could hardly bridge the ugly rift that had been growing, if he was honest, for months now and that lingered under their pathetic attempts to whitewash it for a moment.

Mark had always found relationships difficult, as well as rare.  Love was rocky territory for him, fraught with the daunting prospect of conflict and his own torturous self-doubt, and he now felt lost in mazes of guilt and obligation and reproach.

Not like last night, when there had been a friendship he could hold onto, a person he could reach for blindly.  His old friend, his dearest friend.

The soft smile that spread on his lips at the thought only widened when he saw Susan's face down the hall.

She greeted him warmly, although her eyes were heavily shadowed with lack of sleep.  As they walked down the hall, he told her the good news about Ella.

"If she's seizure-free for two days, we're in the clear," he finished.

Mark felt her eyes on him while he assiduously searched the supply cabinet.  He felt shy about last night, about confessing his guilt to her like that.  It seemed like he should have been saying it to Elizabeth.

"That's great, Mark," she said.  Then, "What are you looking for?"

"Breast pump for Elizabeth."

Oops, he thought immediately.  Too much information again.  He could almost imagine her answer dryly, "Sexy," in that funny sarcastic way of hers, if they had been in the mood to joke.  

When he'd found the pump Mark turned fully towards her.  "Thanks for covering my shift," he said.

"You need to be with your child," she said, shrugging it off.

He flushed.  Was that meant as a reproach?

Susan realized what he was thinking and corrected herself quickly.  "I mean—you know what I mean."

"Yeah.  Thanks."  She must think he was a bad father too.

The day passed.  Mark found himself sucked back into working the ER, Elizabeth's accusing glares notwithstanding.  He was resigned: you couldn't escape this job.  It consumed you, swallowed you whole.  Susan's compassionate gaze told him she understood how everything could pull you in different directions, how you could stand in one place and feel yourself both crushed and overextended by too many pressures to count.

Time passed colorlessly, today's melancholy only a sadder version of business as usual after the high drama of yesterday.  Mark worked dutifully.  He smiled dully – at patients, at well-meaning coworkers.  He juggled work and worry for Ella and fights with Elizabeth and tried ineffectually to defend his forgiveness for Rachel against Elizabeth's mysterious, unreasonable wrath.  Colorless – until, trying to comfort Rachel, to dissuade her from leaving, he felt his teeth close with a sharp stab of pain on his tongue.


	3. Bite Your Tongue

**Chapter 3.****  Bite Your Tongue**

Elizabeth turned onto her back to stare upwards at the plain pure white of a plaster ceiling, fighting homesickness.  She had forgotten, for a second, in the drowsy moments as she emerged from sleep, that she wasn't in her own bed.

In her mind she ran back over her conversations with Mark yesterday.  She knew how tough she was being on him – and she knew she wasn't being quite fair.  But Mark would never learn how to control Rachel.  People who couldn't draw lines – who couldn't tolerate real conflict – shouldn't be raising bratty teenagers.

With effort she raised herself from the pillow, ready for another day.  She'd made her choice.  Now she needed to follow it through – and whether that would lead to a reconciliation or not, she still wasn't sure.  But she'd traveled this answerless circuit too many times in her head.  Forcing herself fully awake, Elizabeth abandoned the dilemma altogether and walked over to Ella's crib to wake her up.

After dropping Ella off at daycare, she was careful to stay in the surgical wing all day.  She didn't want to see Mark, at least till she was more sure of her decision.

She'd discounted, however, that the only person she wanted to see _less _than she wanted to see Mark spent all his time in surgery.

Romano burst into the scrub room while she was preparing for the umpteenth herniated disk of the month.  Then stopped, as he saw her.  His face was quite a picture – a mixture of embarrassment and – well, glee was the best word to describe it.  He must be remembering yesterday.

Well, let him laugh all he wanted behind the silky brown of his eyes.  She hadn't done anything all that terrible.  Elizabeth kept scrubbing vehemently.

Saying nothing, Romano took his place at the sink directly next to hers.  

He reached for the soap across her, his forearm right in front of her face.  Reflexively Elizabeth leaned backwards.  "Sorry," he said, turning on the water.  

His arm was close to hers, sending little currents of air against her skin with every movement he made.  Lather foamed over his hands, spilling onto the sink, absorbing all his attention and most of Elizabeth's, too, until he spoke.

"Are you in on my heart transplant this evening?"

"I don't know," she said.  "My schedule's been mucked up because of everything that's going on with Ella."

"Should be a good one," he said.

A clear invitation.  Was he trying to make up for the awkwardness, or simply make it worse?  Whatever he was doing, she needed to ignore it.  That, and the suds running down his wrists as he lifted his hands under the faucet.  Somehow it fascinated her to reflect on how much more she knew of him than she did two days ago.  "…I don't think so," she said, looking down.  At her own hands.

"I checked the schedule.  You have nothing to do."

He was far too good at these ambush tactics.  "I have a herniated disk to repair."

"That takes an hour at most.  This'll be later."  

"Really, it's not convenient," she said firmly.  "But thanks for the offer."

She felt his movements pause, although his hands were covered in soap.  "Look, are we – I mean –"  He cleared his throat, sounding more awkward than she'd ever heard him.  "Are you not going to be able to work with me anymore?  Because it's hardly professional—and what happened wasn't really a big deal."

Sure.  No big deal.  Only that no matter how much she hated him, she couldn't look at him without remembering how welcome his presence could be.  She knew, other than Mark, she'd never have accepted that sort of kindness from anyone else – but she'd never admit that to Romano himself.

She avoided his question.  "I _am _being professional.  I just have other things I need to do – that is, I –"  Oh, hell.  He could see right through whatever excuses she came up with.  She scrubbed more vigorously, till her hands felt raw.  "Thanks anyway."

"I can ask Edson," he said meditatively.  "Probably better that way.  Men are so much less moody.   Easier to work with."

"'Moody'?" she repeated, spoiling for a fight.

"You have to admit, Lizzie, you do blow rather hot and cold sometimes," he said.

She returned his impudent gaze, but the sticky territory was a bit much for her.  "Don't tell me _you need Dale Edson's assistance on anything," she said, switching tacks._

"Just an extra pair of almost competent hands.  That's all I needed from you, anyway."

She expelled an indignant breath.  "Oh, just a pair of hands?"

"His aren't as pretty as yours, but I think they'll do," he said playfully.  Then he added under his breath, "For surgery, anyway." 

Hastily Elizabeth looked down, away from his face, only to find her eyes focused not on her scrubbing but his.  The fluidity of his hands in motion, skin sliding over oiled, soapy skin.  Then clean water, rinsing off the last suds.  A few trickles escaped and meandered down his forearm, shivering on his elbow.  

"I've done transplants plenty of times, thank you," Elizabeth said crisply.  "I don't need you tossing scraps my way."

He shook droplets off his hands.  A few splattered his cheek, clinging in luminescent beads on his skin, and Elizabeth indicated them with her chin.  "Your face is wet."

"It'll dry."  He rolled his tongue inside his lips, meditating.  "Okay.  If you change your mind, you have my number…?"  He indicated his pager.

Fuzzily she wondered where she'd heard that before – she had an odd suspicion that he was making some sort of inside joke.  "Yeah," she said uncertainly.  

Another decisive flick of his hands, splattering water into the sink, and he breezed away, long coat billowing behind him.  Before he left the room Elizabeth thought she heard him chuckle to himself, but he disappeared too quickly for her to be sure.

~

Susan needed to get drunk.

It was quite simple.  She knew the feeling.  Like the world was sagging at the edges, grayed at the corners.

She'd known the minute she saw Mark stick his tongue out crooked yesterday: the tumor was back.  It had taken all she had to keep working through the day – all she could remember was the sight of his tongue poking all the way off to one side, blood swirling in his mouth.

After Susan tested his nerves and suggested an MRI, she hadn't expected to see Mark till today.  But he'd showed up when her shift was over last night, nervous, alone.  "Elizabeth's gone to a hotel," he said simply.  "I don't want to go by myself."

"You don't have to."  He'd never have to, if she could help it.

They didn't talk as they walked up to neuro.  Before Mark left her in the observation room, Susan, forgetting herself in a rush of affection, threw her arms around him for a bear hug.  His body was sharp-boned, rigid, in her arms, until he patted her back and leaned into her slightly.  An almost feverish heat emanated from him, burning through the flimsy robe.  He tried to laugh her off.  "Hey, hey, I'm going to the next room, not Arizona."

Predictably, this being Mark, the joke fell flat.  They'd never talked about what happened right before she left, and now was the worst time to bring it up.  Susan let go of him and said, "Good luck."

He kissed her cheek.  "Thanks for coming."

Susan was still thinking about a long-ago moment at Union Station the next morning, when Carter fell into step beside her, walking down the halls of the ER.

"You seem exhausted," he said.

"Management," she explained laconically.  "It's killing me."

"Yeah, I'll bet.  Aside from the normal hassles, the competition with Weaver's gotta be a bitch."

"I don't know why I let Romano convince me this was a good idea."

"You should drink more coffee before you talk to him."

She laughed, but only a little.

"Dinner tonight?" Carter offered.  "I heard of a nice place from my Gamma the other day."

"Quiet isn't quite what I need tonight," Susan said dryly.  Millicent Carter's "nice places" tended to involve fancy dresses and painful shoes.  She wasn't going to put her arches through that tonight.

His face was puzzled.

"Actually, I was going to get together with some of the girls," Susan said, making up plans as she went along.

"Ah, ladies' night.  Have fun," he said good-naturedly.  "Tomorrow?"

"Sure, why not."  Carter had to be the most casual relationship she'd ever had, and one of the longest-lasting.  Odd combination, that.

After recruiting Jing-Mei to join her and Abby at her apartment, Susan returned to work.  After her shift, she finally allowed herself a call to Mark's house from the lounge phone.  If she was going to do Weaver's grunt work, she'd take a few perks while she was at it.

Mark picked up after three rings.  "Hello?"

Susan kept her voice low as Chen entered the room to deposit stethoscope and notepad in her locker.  "It's me."

She could hear the smile in his voice.  "Hey, how are you?"

"Good.  Where've you been?"

"I don't start till tonight," he said.

The door opened again.  It was Elizabeth, surveying the lounge with a tired, detached posture.  Shit.  Susan turned slightly away.

"Did you get your… answer?" she murmured, purposely cryptic.

"No," Mark said, oblivious to Susan's problem on the other end.  "I'm going to go to New York to see Dr. Burke.  But we both know what they'll tell me."

"Don't say that," she said automatically.  Her eyes slid off to the side, met Elizabeth's, and held fast to the probing blue gaze.  "You don't know for sure."

"Yeah."  He sighed.

"Good luck, M—okay?"

Elizabeth's eyes sharpened, narrowed.

"Bye, Susan," he said softly.

When Susan hung up Elizabeth said, her eyes appraising Susan's slightly hangdog face, "Susan, have you seen Dr. Kovac?  I have an update on his hernia patient."

"No, sorry," Susan said.  

She shifted her weight, awkward.  "Did Mark come in today?"

"I don't think so," Susan said.

"I checked earlier—he's on tonight," Chen added helpfully.

"Okay."  Elizabeth paused and added rather grudgingly, "Thanks."

She seemed upset.  Susan half-rose as Elizabeth turned to leave.  "Elizabeth?"

About to shut the door, Elizabeth paused impatiently.  "Yes?"

"How's Ella?"

The pursed mouth softened just slightly at the question.  "Recovering nicely."

"Is she at day care?"

"The sitter took her to the ho—the sitter took her for the evening.  I have paperwork to catch up on."

"Skip the paperwork," Susan said impulsively.  "Come on over to my place.  We were all going to have a few drinks."  She ignored the deterrent winces that Jing-Mei hid from Elizabeth's view with a conveniently open locker door.  Apparently Susan wasn't the only one who'd crossed swords with Elizabeth.

Surprise covered Elizabeth's face at this offer of friendship.  She didn't seem to know what to say.

"You seem wiped out," Susan said.  "The paperwork can wait."

"Actually—"  Elizabeth hesitated again, then seemed to make a decision.  "I have another procedure, I just remembered."  Her voice was still frosty.  "Heart transplant.  It's really too good to pass up."

"All right," Susan said, not particularly disappointed.  "Have fun."  The distinguishing mark of a surgeon – taking on extra work for the challenge of it.  Susan had never done it herself.

~

"Did you hear about Corday and Greene?" Edson said as Romano made his incision.

Damn that Edson, he certainly knew his timing.  Romano concentrated on keeping the knife steady – he wasn't sure yet if Edson was purposely pushing his buttons, and anger could wait till this woman's heart was pumping again.  "You mean, their little girl?"  He didn't like the syrupy tone in the other surgeon's voice – as if Ella were somehow fodder for entertainment.  More than that, Romano didn't like feeling self-righteous himself.  It was like breathing cotton candy.  "Pickups."__

"No, no, about last night," Edson said, obeying the curt order.  His voice dropped as Shirley lifted an eyebrow, her attention caught.  "_She _didn't go home.  Went to a hotel."

Now, that was newsworthy.  The air felt clear again – and Romano was having trouble not smirking.  "Reeeally," he drawled.

"Who'd've known?" Shirley wondered.  "I thought they adored each other."

"Hah," said Babcock, emerging from his typical smirky silence.  "He's scared to death of her."

"That's enough," Romano said.  Then, covering up in spite of the fact that everyone there already knew his history with Elizabeth, he suggested, "Panties still in a twist because she didn't think you were smart enough to treat her kid?"

"We might have known this would happen," Edson said as Babcock subsided huffily.  "The biggest wuss at County, plus Queen Elizabeth.  It was never going to work."

"All right, all right," Romano said.  "Don't forget Dr. Corday is still your superior, Dr. Edson.  She may not be pleased to hear—"

The door swung open, and a blue gown and violet scrub cap made their appearance.  Romano let his gaze linger on the scrub-clad shape he could have recognized from a mere peripheral glance, before returning to the small matter of the open heart in front of him.

"Speak of the devil," Babcock muttered under his breath.

"Now, now, quit with the name-calling," Romano answered.  He lifted his voice.  "Lizzie.  You showed up after all…  What a flattering surprise."

Elizabeth took her place by the table, opposite him.  "Do you still need an assist?"

"From you?  Always."  He couldn't resist a bit of flirtation, now that she was a free woman – at least, for the moment.

"How's it going?" she asked, peering down at the field.

Romano filled Elizabeth in on their progress so far, and she began to work, her hands fluidly joining with Romano's in competent, effortless harmony.  Red blood, slick and warm, covered both their gloves, filled his vision.  Elizabeth appeared to be too focused to notice the knowing glances the others were exchanging.

Then Babcock decided to ask, "So, what's new, Elizabeth?"  His meaning was clear in his voice.  Elizabeth's entire body stiffened warily.

Did the words "associate chief" mean nothingto these two? Romano wondered.  He had half a mind to fire the little weasel on the spot, or give Elizabeth his blessing to do it herself.  "Let's cut out the small talk," he said curtly.  "Dr. Corday and I have a woman's heart in our hands.  Granted, I've met the woman and she isn't much use to this world as far as intellect goes, but no one dies on my table."

Elizabeth's eyes flicked up to him.  He acknowledged her silent thanks, but couldn't resist a gentle jab.  "Finished that hernia, Elizabeth?" he said softly, silkily.

"Yes, this morning," she said.  

"Well, you see, you _did have time," he said.  "More than enough time."_

"I was going to catch up on some paperwork tonight," she said.

"Yeah, that's always a tough decision, choosing between an exciting procedure or musty dictations that couldn't possibly wait another six hours," he said mildly.  Edson and Babcock darted bemused but still gleeful glances at each other, happy to see any dig at Elizabeth even if they had no idea what she was uncomfortable about.  

"You had it covered," she retorted, unfazed.  "You said you only needed a competent pair of hands, and Dr. Edson almost fits that description."

"But you changed your mind?" he prompted, enjoying himself immensely.

He could just see her earlobes turn crimson under the cap.  "Well, I… thought the dictations could wait."

"Glad you came," he said.  "Things are just about to get interesting."

~

Abby was sprawled on Susan's couch, her bedcovers still folded in a neat pile on the floor nearby.  "Mmm," she said, eyes drooping.  "I needed that."  Her face was still purple and swollen, and her voice was pinched by the swelling in her nose.

"Me too," Susan said from her perch on the arm of Jing-Mei's chair.  Her body felt light and giddy.  She could almost forget about the tumor – almost.

"Oh, hey, you know Carter," Abby remarked, her voice slurred and languid.

"My boyfriend?" Susan said, sharing an amused little glance with Jing-Mei.  "Yes, vaguely."

"You don't think he's better-looking than Luka, do you?" Abby said.  "I mean, Luka's definitely better-looking, right?"

"Should I be insulted?" Susan whispered to Chen.

"Yes, very," Chen answered, chuckling.

"Right?" Abby demanded again.  "…Can I have another beer?"

"Be my guest," Susan said, gesturing to the refrigerator.  They'd already finished off the first two six-packs by then.

"I mean, Luka doesn't think I'm that pretty," Abby said as she made her swaying way over to the fridge.  "But he has a beautiful accent.  It sounds so sweet when he speaks Croatian in bed –of course, I have no idea what he's saying, but…"  She gave an expressive little laugh.

"Oh, my ears," Jing-Mei whispered plaintively.

Susan's laugh was half a sigh.  "_You gave her that fifth beer."_

"Well, she went ahead and gave herself the sixth," Chen said, watching as the fridge door slammed shut and another silver can appeared in Abby's hand.

"Still, Carter gets me.  We're such good friends.  He's sweet, you know?" continued Abby obliviously, plopping back onto the couch and tilting her head back in a long swig.

"I've noticed," Susan said dryly.

"Yeah," Abby said, suddenly bitter.  "I dumped Luka for that rich boy, and look what he goes and does.  Finds someone else."

Chen seemed to be in more discomfort than Susan right now.  –Don't worry, Susan wanted to tell her, –my feelings aren't that fragile.  Then again, maybe it was Chen's feelings that were fragile.  Maybe Carter had three women on his string.

"_You dumped Luka?" Susan said at length.  "I thought __he—"_

"Well, whatever," Abby interrupted with an expansive gesture.

"Yeah, same difference," Susan said amiably.  Jesus Christ.  Time for a change of subject.  "Hey, Jing-Mei, what's up with you and the X-ray guy?"

"Who?  From last week?" Chen said innocently.

Susan laughed.  "Just a short term thing, then?"

Jing-Mei shrugged sheepishly.  "We saw a movie.  Got dinner.  —I didn't call him."

"I know that game," Susan laughed.

Chen looked over at Abby, who was quietly finishing off her drink. "I should go," she said, lifting herself up with effort.  "I'll see you tomorrow."

They walked over to the door together, stealing glances behind them at Abby.

"She's going to feel those six beersin the morning," Susan said, wincing.  On top of the broken nose, Abby was in for a bad day.

"Are you worried about her and Carter?" Chen asked quietly.

"Uh…"  She tried to rake up a little jealousy, but none was forthcoming.  "No, not really."

Chen gave her a curious look, so Susan added by way of explanation, "I trust him."  

Actually, she just didn't care anymore.

A/N: What?  You thought this fic wasn'tabout Abby?  But _everything is about Abby.  Always!  Do tell me though, in your reviews (ahem…hint hint…) if you thought there were too many characters in this chapter._

Hope you got your fill of Mark's absence, Katie and RL, because I have a bad feeling he might be coming back soon.  Slingblade, give those writers an extra slap on my behalf, will you?  I'm carrying quite a few grudges myself.


	4. Second Chances

**Chapter 4.****  Second Chances**

Romano stopped by Elizabeth's office with a stack of papers, minutes before she'd been about to escape.  

"Present for you," he said.  "Merry Christmas."

The papers thumped on the top of her desk, disarranging a couple of other piles that had already been there.  Elizabeth glared.  "What are these?"

"Peter, patients, reports, state medical board, any of this ring a bell?" he said.  "I must say, single living is doing wonders for your short-term memory."

Her jaw dropped.  Who the hell did he think he was?  "I haven't noticed that it does wonders for a person's height, either," she answered frostily.

He cocked his head, a smile glimmering a little behind his eyes.  "Just get these done."

"I don't really see how these are my problem," she said a bit fretfully.  He probably just wanted to see how well she moved when he jerked the strings.

"You're associate chief.  Everything that should be my problem that doesn't interest me becomes your problem.  And, I like watching you suffer."

She gave him a sugary, poisoned smile.  "That was your primary reason for giving me this position, I suppose."

Instantly she realized that she'd sounded too serious.  Romano seemed taken aback.  "Well, no, obviously.  That was a joke, Li—Doct—uh—Elizabeth."  Another strange look, and then he said, "Oookay.  I'll just make him come here.  But if things get ugly and Benton's fat lip gets split, he has you to blame."

"Yes, I'm sure it will be Peter with the split lip," Elizabeth agreed dryly.

At that, Romano rolled his tongue inside his own lip – and let the remark pass as he took the stack of papers back and backed out the door.

Thinking the conversation over, Elizabeth picked up the photo of Mark from her desk.  Today she'd been about to consider relenting, after he'd seemed so eager to have her back, until he missed Ella's appointment without a single good excuse to cover himself.  It was no use, she realized now, he'd always be like this.  

She touched her fingertip to the placid smile on his face.  Suddenly the door swung back open, and Romano's voice said peremptorily, "Lizzie."

"What is it, Robert?" she said, allowing her weariness to show in her voice as she hastily put down the photograph.

"I'm not much of an administrator, but I'm not stupid enough to promote people for the wrong reasons."

Her breath caught.  He continued, "You'd been wronged, and you deserved better."

Slowly Elizabeth looked up at him.  His tight, grave nod was almost imperceptible.

"All right.  All right," she sighed.  "Give me those reports, I'll get them to Benton."

"Whatever you say," he said with a smirk, and she couldn't tell anymore whether this was an intricate little mind-game or whether he'd really been serious just now.  But she would rather like an excuse to see Peter, who'd been remiss about keeping in touch.  There weren't many other people she could call friends at the moment.

 "And, Elizabeth?" Romano said just before he stepped out the door.

She raised an eyebrow.

"Tomorrow.  Or else."

"I _know," she snapped._

He smirked again.  "Good."

~

Susan looked down at her lap.  After long minutes of brooding silence, Mark had fallen asleep.

The house was cold, the big front room too airy.  She thought about pulling the blanket up over her shoulders, but with his head still heavy in her lap that wasn't going to work.  Easing his weight off her legs, she gingerly stood up, blood tingling as it returned to circulation in her legs.

She didn't know where his bedroom was, but she headed upstairs, noting with some envy the comfortable beauty that subtly announced a certain amount of wealth.  Must've been Elizabeth's wealth, though, if Mark's salary was anything like Susan's.

The first door she tried contained a twin bed floating in the sea of dirty clothes on the floor.  She went down the hall a little and found what must be Mark's room.  The place was big and cold and tastefully decorated, not exactly the kind of room she'd like to return to at nights.  He hadn't been cleaning up very well, either – the bed wasn't even made.

Susan flipped on the light, telling herself she'd only look in his bureau for the sweatshirt she'd been searching for, then get the hell out.  His clothes drawers were incredibly disorganized and after rooting around through every drawer, Susan eventually found a gray sweatshirt that she'd seen Mark wearing a few times, back before she left for Arizona.

As she closed the drawer and straightened, she came face to face with Elizabeth.

She was wearing a beautiful dress, a dark grayish color, and looked ready to go into labor at any moment.  Mark was smiling, but his eyes weren't on the camera – they were on Elizabeth, whose smile lit up the photograph and attracted Susan's fascinated attention.

So they _had been in love once.  This must have been their wedding day – the one Susan avoided, because it happened at the moment her new life was crumbling to pieces around her, and she didn't want to indulge herself in might-have-beens.  She still remembered that invitation, coming out of the blue after years of no contact.  And her brief telephone call, congratulating Mark with a lump in her throat._

Susan looked away, focused again on the more immediate problem of the goosebumps covering her arms.

When she pulled the sweatshirt over her head it had the limp, comforting feeling of well-loved clothing.  It hung several inches lower than her hips, reminding her just how tall Mark was.

She ran one hand unthinkingly up and down the opposite sleeve of his sweatshirt as she walked back downstairs.  Mark was lying on his back, looking around groggily, when she entered the room.

"Thought you left," he said, his voice slurred.

"I was cold," she said softly, not sure if he was really awake yet.  "I hope you don't mind I borrowed your sweatshirt."

"Looks better on you anyway," he said, smiling.

She walked over to him and perched on the arm of the couch, touching his forehead, partially to check for fever.  His skin was slightly warm, but only from sleep, she thought.  "Are you ready to go upstairs?  You had a nice long nap down here, and I'd kind of like one, too."

He looked up at her, moving only his eyes.  "Yeah.  You need your sleep."

"So do you."  She ran her fingers again over the rough edges of his scar.  "I'll help you up.  You can do it."

"You sure about that?" he grunted as he shifted himself with immense effort, preparing to stand.

She put her hand under his arm and lifted unceremoniously.  He put an arm around her shoulders, leaning comfortably on her.

"Please tell me you're not working tomorrow," she said as they took the first steps up and the weight on her shoulders increased.

"I am."

"Mark!"

"I'll be fine."

"Hasn't anyone ever told you, you get allotted sick days for this exact reason?"

They were up the stairs.  He took his arm away, walking on his own, one hand pressed to his stomach.

"Do you feel sick?"

"I'll be fine," he said again, blithely.

They stopped outside his bedroom door, sharing a quiet little silence.  Mark was pale, but he didn't seem as sick as he had at the hospital.  "Need a toothbrush?" he asked.

"That'd be good," she said.  "Do I—?"

"No, that's not what I meant.  Your breath is fine," he said with a smile, trudging over to the bed.  "I just assumed you'd want one.  There's a few spares in the cabinet in my bathroom."

As Mark wearily climbed into his own bed, Susan stood in his bathroom, brushing her teeth.

"You can go now, if you want," he called.  "I think I'll be fine."

"I'm inviting myself over to your couch for the night," she answered through a mouthful of toothpaste.  "You know you shouldn't be alone."

He paused.  "I know."

She rinsed her mouth out and emerged from the bathroom.  "When Elizabeth comes back, you're going to have to tell her about this."

"She's not coming back, Susan," Mark said, his voice sleepy and vulnerable.  "She told me today she didn't know when she'd be back.  That means never."

"Not necessarily," she said.  

"I messed up again," he said.  "I missed Ella's appointment.  It's like betraying them all over again."

"I don't think you have to give up on this, Mark.  Sometimes people get a surprise second chance."

She'd been thinking, vaguely, of their old friends Doug and Carol, who'd been given second, third, fourth chances.  Mark's drowsy, instinctive answer took every breath from her body.

"You and I didn't," he said.

At first Susan panicked, wondering how to answer that, how to understand it even.  Finally she said, her voice strained, "What?"

He didn't answer.  Susan minced closer and realized he'd gone to sleep, the blankets still flung to one side of the bed.  He'd taken his shirt off, flung it on the floor, and sprawled on the unmade bed.

She put the shirt in the hamper in his closet.  Then she stood over Mark, pulling the blankets onto him.  Her eyes stung; she'd somehow hoped that it was all a false alarm, until this morning.  Yielding to a brief temptation, she bent down to kiss his cheek, but stopped herself before her lips touched his skin and fled the room.

~

Romano didn't go straight home that night.  Instead, he found himself steering down a route he traveled often on his way home.

He couldn't have said exactly why tonight of all nights he felt the need to do this.  After all, he'd just gone two days ago.

Inside the sterilized building, whose antiseptic atmosphere felt like home to him after so many years working and breathing County General air, he took the elevator to the fourth floor Special Care Unit.

His mother was lying upright in bed, staring at nothing, her body sagging backwards to take the shape of the bed.  It was when he saw her like this – deeply, permanently alone – that he almost regretted conceding to her plea to stay here.  But Alzheimer's created loneliness wherever its victims went, and she'd been desperately afraid of being dependent on him of all people.  Robert sympathized with that – there was too much bad blood between them, and he had no small understanding of her fierce, debilitating pride himself.  Besides, prolonged guilt trips didn't interest him.

"Hey, Ma," he said from the doorway, reverting half-consciously to the name he'd used when he was younger, in private.

When he approached her, he could only tell she'd noticed him by a slight movement of her gnarled hands above the bedcovers.  It was all the recognition he got from her on her good days.

"It's a nice night," he said.  "Pretty cool out, but spring's coming. … Did you go outside today?"

"No."  Her voice was scratchy, perhaps from lack of practice.

Again with the guilt!  Wasn't he just a regular old Catholic today.  He could blame his mother for those propensities, at least.  She'd been pious in her own private, crotchety way.  One of the many things they'd fought about.

A nurse's steps slowed down near the doorway, and Romano turned to see a young guy with a red chubby face poking his head in.  "Visiting hours—"

"Yeah, yeah," he said.  "Over in ten minutes.  I know."

The nurse left with a shrug.  Damned officious nurses, got on his nerves.  The only nurse he'd ever been able to stand was Shirley, and even she had her moments of stupidity.

"Mom?" he said when they were alone again.  "You ready to go to sleep now?"

"Robert," she said.  "Is that you?"

It had been years since she last knew him for who he was.  Even in rare instances of lucidity, she didn't usually know him.  "Yeah," he said with forced calm, knowing she was about to slip back into her own private world.

She turned her head to look at the window.  Romano considered leaving now – she was drifting away again – but instead he asked, "Do you want to look outside?"

When she didn't answer, it occurred to him that if she were his patient he would have written her off as a gork and given up on communication.

So much for detachment.

"Come on."  He put one hand under her armpit, almost afraid that she'd snap in his hands.  Careful maneuvering got her to her feet, and they took baby steps over to the wheelchair waiting by the window.

When the aide came back to bug Romano again, he left his mother sitting by the window and took off.  It took only minutes for him to get home, but the answering machine was already blinking.  He listened to the one brief message, threw on the coat he'd just taken off and within minutes was speeding back towards County. 


	5. Wakeup Calls

A/N: Thank you to everyone who's reviewing, you're very kind!  And in return I've been shamefully haphazard about updates… sorry.  But it seemed like a damn good time to self-therapize.  (Sniffle…)  And these are the poor results.

Here's a good dose of AU escapism and gross medical inaccuracies (because my knowledge is either wholly made up or gleaned from ER itself).

Some language.  Not really enough for an R rating, but.

**Chapter 5.****   Wake-Up Calls**

Romano slammed into the ER, noticing vaguely the falling faces of the desk clerks when they saw him.  "Maria Tucci, LOL, just brought in," he demanded without ceremony.

"Trauma One," Frank said sullenly.

He made himself walk, not run, with desperately long strides over to the room where his mother was.

The message on his machine had been brief and less than friendly, since he wasn't beloved by the staff of his mother's hospital any more than by the staff of his own.  "This is Josephine Taylor," the head of the hospital had said.  "Your mother fell while she was trying to get out of her wheelchair, and she hit her head.  She's being brought to Cook County General in an ambulance.  You should get down there right away."

 The door of Trauma One opened to reveal Carter working on his mother.  Of all the doctors available, she had to end up with some kid who'd been a resident for about twelve years?  "Out," Romano barked.  "I'm doing this one."

"I've got it, Dr. Romano," Carter protested.

Romano rounded the edge of the gurney to look down at the pale face, made whiter and pastier by the harsh light.  "Give it to me and go," he snarled.

Cowed, Carter rattled off her stats.  "Maria Tucci, brought in from her nursing home after a fall.  Eighty-three-year-old woman, blunt head trauma.  Apparent dislocation of the hip and multiple leg fractures.  BP 100 over 60, pulse-ox 90."

"Page Corday," Romano said, beginning a quick examination.  "Leg is shattered.  We should operate right away."

"Corday's not on call," Carter ventured.

"Get her anyway," he growled.

Carter started to argue further, but seeing Romano's gritted teeth, he lifted his hands.  "Okay.  Okay."

Ignoring the petulant looks from Carter, Romano switched into doctor mode, forgetting that the shattered leg, the closed eyes belonged to a person he knew and recalling instead the vast stores of knowledge he needed.

After only seconds of impassioned labor, he heard Carter come back in again.  "_What_?" he growled.

"She's not answering her pager."

Romano looked up at the pale challenge on Carter's face.  "Once she's stabilized, I'll take her up to the OR and handle it from there.  You can go, Dr. Carter."

"Well, thank you," Carter muttered under his breath as he left.

~

Susan was sound asleep on the couch again when the phone rang.

Late night phone calls frightened her with their vast possibilities.  Without even thinking, she picked up and said, "Hello?"

In the short, shocked pause that followed her answer, she realized where she was.  Mark's house.  At –she checked her watch—midnight.

And who else would it be but Elizabeth?  She waited, savoring the feeling of idiocy, for the caller to identify herself.

The voice on the other end came as an utter surprise.  "Dr. Lewis?" it asked.

She winced.  "Dr. Romano.  Hi…"

"I guess I don't want to know what you're doing at Greene's house.   Don't even bother with the locked-out-of-your-apartment story.  I need to get in touch with Elizabeth right away."

"This better be good," she sighed.

"It's a helluva lot better than anything you're going to be able to come up with," he retorted.  "She's not answering her page."

Susan sat up with a groan of protesting muscles.  "Is this about a patient?"

"Yeah.  Can I assume she's not in on your little… colleague bonding session and ask for her hotel number?"

"Dr. Romano, it's really not—"

"I said, don't bother.  Just get the goddamn number," he said.  "_Please_."

"Okay, I have it," Susan said.  "Got a pen?"

"I've got a brain.  Just say it."

She recited the number quickly and added, "And whatever you tell Elizabeth, let her know I answered from the phone _on the couch."_

"Do I get to hear who's on the couch with you?  Because I'm fascinated."  He was hardly invested in the slam this time; his sarcasm was weary, reflexive.

"Just tell her the truth."

"I'll let you do the telling, if your conscience is that guilty," he said.  "The messenger always gets shot."

She rolled her eyes.  "I'll see you in the morning, Dr. Romano."

"Sweet dreams," he answered pleasantly.

~

Elizabeth had been dreaming about food.

Eating, rather.  The food was an appendix.  Stale, standardized, a backdrop to the drama of life at boarding school.  Her dreams had begun to revolve around her adolescence every night since moving to the hotel.  She'd decided it was due to the alienation of being away from home; the dislocation was very similar to her early, wretched days at boarding school.

But the phone rang, drawing her back into adulthood.  She groped for the receiver on the wrong side of the bed at first, then remembered where she was.

"Hello?"  Her voice was scratchy.

"Why the hell aren't you answering your pager?" said Romano's voice.

"I didn't even hear it," she said, checking to see – yes, she'd missed three pages.  "I'm so sorry.  I had it right here."

"I need you in the OR.  Now.  Eighty-three-year-old woman with a shattered leg."

"What happened to Edson?  I'm not on call."

"This isn't a case I want him working on."

"Look, I just went to see Peter, which I shouldn't have been asked to do in the first place, and now you're calling me out of bed for something you could quite easily handle yourself—"

He cut her off.  His voice was strained.  "If I could handle it myself, do you really think I'd be on the phone practically begging for your help?"

She paused.  "No."

"I need you in the OR," he said, returning to brusqueness.  "That's the end of it.  If you're not able, I suppose I'll call Edson."

"No.  No, I'll come."

"If the kid's a problem, Yosh will take care of it."

"Ella's a she, and Yosh is a nurse, not a babysitter."

"Isn't it the same?  Look, I'll have something arranged.  Just bring her over."

"I'll call the nanny and get her to stay with Ella tonight.  I'll be there in thirty minutes; can you start without me?"

"I think I'll manage okay," he said dryly. 

She didn't bother answering.

"Thank you, Elizabeth," he added, his tone lower, just before she hung up.

~

Susan's watch beeped to wake her two hours before her shift.  She wanted to strangle it, or use it to strangle herself, but she desperately needed to get home and put on something clean.  A shower would be good, too.

She crept upstairs to see how Mark was doing.  To her surprise, her soft knock brought a clear answer.  "Susan?"

She opened the door.  He was still in bed, staring up at the ceiling, already awake.  "Morning," she sing-songed.

"Morning."

"How long have you been up?"

"A few minutes."

Susan sidled inside, taking only a few pace sand then stopping.  "I have to tell you something," she said.

Hearing her tone, he sat up with some effort, leaning against the headboard.  Susan could see his ribs sharply outlined through his skin, another inescapable reminder.  "What is it?"

She came closer, sitting on the edge of the bed.  "I did something incredibly stupid last night.  Romano called for Elizabeth's number, and—"

"You answered the phone," he filled in.

"I'm so sorry.  I was sleeping, not even thinking."

He sat up.  "Don't be sorry.  I know Elizabeth's been sensitive about you coming back, but we didn't do anything wrong."

"No," Susan agreed hesitantly.

He noticed the look in her eyes.  "Of course, I don't remember how I got up here," he joked.  "Or how my shirt came off.  So maybe I'm a naughty adulterer and don't even know it."

She laughed.  "Oh, Mark, you couldn't be naughty if you tried."

"I know," he said amiably.

"–Do you really not remember talking to me last night?"

"No."  His eyes searched hers, wide and warmly brown.  "Why, what did I say?"

"Nothing important," Susan murmured.  Then, louder, "Except that you were going to work today.  Which I'm sure was just radiation-induced hallucination on your part, right?"

"I want to keep going like always," he said stubbornly.  "I don't want to slow down."

Ruefully she touched the back of the thin hand lying on the bedcovers.  "I know.  You want to pretend nothing's wrong."

"That's not it."

"Yes it is.  You do it all the time; you always have.  It's one of your more endearing flaws."  She sparkled a little at him, wanting to kiss away the childish, joking pout that her teasing brought to his face.  "Now.  Let me call the hospital and say you're sick."

She'd already picked up the telephone when Mark snatched it out of her hand.  Giggling, she tried to grab it back, but the game ended too quickly – he couldn't move fast enough to elude her grasp, and her laughter faded when he blanched with the effort of roughhousing.

Soberly Mark put the phone back on the hook.  The prickling behind Susan's eyes told her to make an exit quickly and gracefully.  It wasn't her place to grieve so intimately, to watch him die.  She'd expected sadness, but not like this, twisting and wild and uncontainable, too much to feel for a mere friend.

"I need to go home and freshen up before work," she said hastily.  "I'll see you later."

He lifted his hand wanly.  "Later."

Emerging from the spacious, melancholy house into a cleaner, brighter morning, Susan decided to forget about last night.  Maybe the old affection had returned for a moment on his part and a new, tentative attraction had arisen on hers.  Well, the combination of empty houses and lonely nights and impending death could wreak havoc with anyone's psyche.

But once she'd silenced her inner voices, new trouble arrived in the form of Carter.  According to her own verdict that last night had been innocent, Susan openly told him where she'd been last night.  

He was different than the boyish John Carter she'd known before Suzie and Chloe and Arizona and Paul Sobricki intervened in their stolid little lives.  Now capable of anger, of irrationality, of coldness, he was an adult, and underneath her sarcastic quips, she started to chafe at his particular brand of querulous, demanding maturity.

She told him Mark was like a brother, uncomfortably conscious of the first open lie she'd told in ages; even played the Abby card, which made scarcely a dent in his jealousy.   

They went to work and, because it wasn't enough that she was dealing with Carter and the background threat of Romano, a tall blonde dominatrix happened along and earned Susan a sexual harrassment class the next day, along with three other miscreants, and Carter.

~

Romano slumped out of the OR ahead of Elizabeth when they'd finished patching up their elderly patient.

She followed him, pulling off her scrub cap as she did.  "Robert?"

"Nice work, Lizzie," he said.

She waited for an added comment, something slightly more cutting – more like Robert – but he just gave her a tight half-smile, and a nod.  It had been like this all morning: he was terse sometimes, polite others, but he didn't speak other than to talk about the medicine.  She was so unused to his silence that it put her on edge.

The surgery had started out difficult, so precarious that Elizabeth fully expected the patient not to survive.  Romano had worked with intense concentration, even when it was clear the procedure was going well.  When Babcock remarked on a scrap of gossip about a couple of X-ray technicians, Robert snapped at him to shut up.

They stood awkwardly in the hallway.  "Way to start out the morning," Elizabeth finally said with a small sigh.  Her eyes felt watery and glassy from lack of sleep.

"Well, you never quite got a good night in," he said.  "I wish they timed these things better, but you can't stop the masses from hurting themselves at night."

He reached around to the back of his own neck, kneading the muscles with a wince on his face, the tendons in his arm straining as if to burst from his skin.  Eyes fluttering closed, he rotated his head gingerly, taking in a deep breath.

"Are you ill?" she asked reflexively.

Taken by surprise, he opened his eyes.  Even recently, when the dynamic between them had been so much more charged and – yes, almost intimate – than usual, this kind of friendliness was an event between them.  "I'm kind of wiped out," he said.  "Was it just me, or did that take forever?"

"Six hours.  …I've seen you go eight or ten without flagging."

"Felt longer than six," he grunted, digging his fingers into sore muscles again.

"What's going on?" she asked out loud.  "You seem strange today."

Romano's eyes flicked open, meeting hers.  Shaking his head, he opened his mouth to answer, but Elizabeth's pager went off, and then his, in chorus.

They rushed together to the ER to deal with a schoolbus-load of kids that had crashed into a ditch.  Elizabeth never got a chance to speak to Romano alone as she worked with increasing detachment on child after child.  Her sleepiness enveloped her in a haze of apathy that insulated her from another mercilessly demanding day at work, even from the rare awkward moments when she came face to face with an equally sleepy-looking Mark.

That evening, when the last child was safely dealt with, Elizabeth signed her cases out to Jensen and called Chris to apologize for the overtime, but no one answered.  They must be asleep already, she realized.  She felt terrible.  It had been twenty-four hours since she'd last seen Ella, and it might be morning before she saw her again.

On her way out, she passed post-op, where the patient from this morning, a Ms. Tucci, was resting.  To her surprise, Romano was standing by the gurney, talking with apparent calmness to Shirley.

Elizabeth waited outside, watching him.  The posture still aggressive, but also weary; the face grave and reserved.  He _must _be ill, or why was he acting so human?

When he turned away from Shirley to leave, his eyes met hers through the window.  She stayed still, solemnly returning the recognition in his face.  His features were drawn, sharp, pale.

He didn't break that gaze until he came out into the hall, finally allowing himself to drag his feet as he walked.

They faced each other.  The silence weighed on Elizabeth.  "She's fine?" she said.

"Vitals are good.  But there was a concussion, and she's still unconscious," he said.  Then, with a sharp, rueful exhalation, "What a hell of a day."

"What's going on?" she said quietly.

"What do you mean?"

"Why are you so involved?"

"I don't know why you keep harping on this," he snapped.  "I want good surgeons working on good cases.  That's all."

"Don't lie.  It's _me_."

His eyes flared into hers.

She stood staunchly, driving home her admission that she was, or should be, more than a colleague to him.

He opened his mouth finally, but only to speak through barely open lips, his voice flat as if to conceal how much he cared about her answer.  "Are you busy tonight?" 

Please r/r!  Thanks…


	6. Unwind

A/N: Warning for some language.

I'm still exorcising some bitterness over recent spoilers, so this bit is fairly Romano-heavy.  And I'm not sure how it turned out – so commentary or criticism is welcome, as usual.  Thanks for all the nice feedback so far!

**Chapter 6.  Unwind**

"What do you mean?" Elizabeth asked, surprised.

Romano shook his head.  "I could just use a drink.  Thought you might need one, too."

She considered briefly – Ella was asleep, so there wouldn't be any harm in taking an hour to unwind.  "I can come along, I suppose."

"Are you off?"

She nodded.

"Then let's go.  I know a good English pub, if you're in the mood."

"Always," she smiled.

They took a cab – Elizabeth stopped Robert before he could pay for them both, although on top of the expense of the hotel her own budget was slowly decreasing.

She looked up to see a place she vaguely recognized, but couldn't quite place.  It was only when they stepped inside, confronted with the aroma of cigar smoke and sweat, and then the sight of the dartboard on the corner, that she remembered and laughed.

Robert looked over his shoulder, puzzled, as they walked across the room.

"I've been here before," she said.

They slid into two stools, side by side.

"What's so funny about that?" he asked.

"I came here with Peter."

He rolled his eyes and started to make a comment, but Elizabeth added,

"To recover from a long day spent fighting with you."

"Poor Peter, he could never take a bit of fun," Romano said with a shrug.

"Actually, it was me you'd been torturing the most."

"Well, you are much more fun to torture," he said.  "And I say that with the deepest of admiration.  When was this, anyway?"

"I'd just come to America," she said.  "Alison Beaumont… Koklovitz… do you remember?"

"Oh, Jesus, yes," he groaned.  "You were so stubborn."

"And you were a regular curmudgeon," she said.

"_Am, Elizabeth.  You talk like I've lost my edge."_

They ordered drinks – a soda for Elizabeth, who had yet another shift at seven the next morning, and a vodka for Robert.

He downed his first shot before Elizabeth could think of anything else to say.  "Hold on a sec," he said.  "I'll be right back."

She sipped at her soda pensively.  Being here brought back everything from that tumultuous year – she, arriving alone and ambitious and innocently in awe of Romano's gifts as a surgeon; the slow wearing away of her veneration for him; the startling revelation at its close that he was attracted to her.

He returned with a pack of cigarettes in his hand.

"What is that?" she said.

He gave her the look he usually reserved for clueless med students or Jerry Moscovitz, and maneuvered his way back onto his seat.  His arm brushed Elizabeth's, as they were pushed closer together by the growing crowd at the bar, and she twitched away only belatedly.  It'd been a long time since they were together outside of the hospital – she'd forgotten how to act.

His mouth tightened when he noticed Elizabeth pulling away.  Still without a word to her, he turned to the woman next to him to ask for a light.  The woman, a petite blonde – just the right height for him – looked him up and down and proffered one with palpable disinterest.

"I didn't know you smoked," Elizabeth said, hiding a smile at his chagrin.

"Used to.  Junior high."

"Junior high school?" she repeated doubtfully.

"Stole them from my father," he said.  "Quit when he died of lung cancer."

"I'm sorry."

"It was thirty years ago."  He exhaled smoke, turning his face away from her.  "I haven't got many vices, but I indulge myself once in awhile."

She didn't know him like this, bitter for no apparent reason, mysterious and distant but also uncomfortably close.  

"She's my mother," he remarked off-handedly.

"…Who?"

"This morning.  The leg fracture."

Elizabeth wasn't quite certain he was serious.

Grimly he ran his tongue inside his lip, as if he wanted to reclaim the secret; but it had been told now, and he elaborated as if he begrudged her every word.  "She remarried after my father.  It's why her name is different."

"God – Robert – why didn't you say something?"

"Say what, exactly, Elizabeth?  That my mother was lying on that table with all the mental capacity of a two-year-old?  It's not something I—"  He broke off, with a cough that could have been the beginning of a sob if he had been another man.  Then he finished, "It's not something I want the desk clerks getting their flapping little lips on."

Elizabeth looked down at her hands as she knit her fingers together, nervous and exhilarated that she was finally discovering something behind the hard shell of sarcasm – still caustic, but tinged with feeling.

"What is she like?" she asked.

"I hardly know," he said.  "I left home early, cut the apron strings… after awhile we fell out of touch.  Can't say I was sorry.  She was a tough old lady, way too bossy – used to harp on me for not being religious enough, for my choice of fiancée."  At Elizabeth's startled look, he explained, "She was a grad student.  In women's studies, if you can believe that."

She couldn't.

"Plus, she had 'I brake for animals' plastered on her car bumper."  He shook his head with a reminiscent laugh.  "…Anyway, a little too unconventional for my mother."

"But you spend time with her now?"

"Yes – now that she can't fight with me."

He tapped out his cigarette with a flicker of impatience and the tone of his voice returned to normal. "Well, Elizabeth, I think this atmosphere loosens my lips more than I like."

"I don't mind hearing it."  It took her mind off everything else.  Simply listening to the laconic, reluctant story from a man she'd long been vaguely, almost unconsciously, curious about occupied all her attention.  She was watching his face for a hint of his meaning, listening for it in his voice.  "When did you get back in touch?"

"When I brought you back from England, my sister made me go see her.  By that time, she didn't…  She wasn't really there anymore.  I spent a lot of time banging my head against that stone wall, trying to remind her of things, but… you know the disease.  It's not something you can just go in there and cut out of them."

"No," Elizabeth agreed softly.

She was still knitting her hands together, without realizing it.  His eyes flicked down to the nervous motion and he seemed both pleased and sorrowful to see the effect of his story.  Almost absently he touched her hand, stilling the twisting immediately. 

And he shrugged, wryly.  "We do get along much better now."

Elizabeth looked down at his fingers, lying across hers – then back up to his eyes, which were dark and straightforward and inviting.

"I need some air," she murmured, standing up with a jolt.

Hardly noticing the crush of bodies, she alternately wove and shoved her way through the crowd, needing to feel something cool on her face – to breathe something other than smoke and beer and sweat.

As she reached the door, his arm extended from behind to open it for her, and she realized he'd kept up with her sudden flight.  With mocking, but concerned chivalry, Robert held the door while Elizabeth passed awkwardly.

Outside, they stood in a magical, sudden calm.  He was impassive and guarded, but she could see that his eyes were dilated, and fixed intensely on hers.

"You followed me," she said, not quite pleased.

"Were you going to ditch me?" he asked, with deliberate amusement on his face.

An ambulance passed with a shriek of sirens.  Reflexively, both of them turned to look at it.  Elizabeth answered once the sound had faded, "I hadn't made up my mind yet."

Then, still without a conscious decision, she took a step towards him.

He followed her lead, stepping in and wrapping his hand behind her neck, pulling her close.  They kissed without preliminaries, without hesitating, just closed eyes and rough lips, her fingers digging into his back.  She staggered backwards at first, her back pressed against the scraping, unforgiving brick wall behind her.  He tasted of that one cigarette, strange and acrid and unwholesome and she opened her mouth, welcoming.

When she pulled away, too late and too slowly, she planted her open palms on his chest, propelling him gently backwards.

He rubbed his hand over his mouth, rueful and quiet.  There were streaks of blood on his knuckles: his hand had scraped against the brick wall behind her neck.  She could see the melancholy on his face, and the desire.

"I'll call a cab to take me home," she said finally.

He looked down, letting the shadows slide quivering over his face, concealing what he was thinking.  With obvious effort, as if invisible ties had closed off his airway, he said, "You don't have to go just yet."

No, she didn't.  She could stay here, or even go home with him – could lose herself in his consumingly strong personality, in an unexpected culmination to the games they'd played for years.  "I'm sorry," she said with some difficulty.  "Ella's at home…"

"She's sleeping, isn't she?" he said.

"There's Mark.  I still wear his ring." 

His voice was oddly ironic.  "Yeah.  There's still Mark."  He took a few steps back to the door and paused at the threshold.  "As much as it pains me to be unchivalrous, I'll let you get ahold of your own cab."

Elizabeth murmured something perfunctory – a good-bye, or an apology – and he, with a little nod of acknowledgement, disappeared into the haze of smoke inside the pub.  That was good, that was what he needed to do – she'd been afraid she'd have to explain herself.  And there were no explanations. 

She was accustomed to knowing what she wanted, and to being cleverer and quicker than the men in her life, so that they could never take her by surprise.  With Robert she'd been evenly matched, and that in itself was unnerving.  She'd been momentarily attracted to him, that much she knew, but for once the tables had turned; she was confused about what lay beneath that attraction.

Elizabeth stepped out onto the edge of the sidewalk, lifting up her hand to signal a ride home. 

Ella was sleeping in her crib when Elizabeth got home – no, not home, she corrected herself – back to her hotel room – her hands curled in fists near her mouth.  She kissed the child's forehead, stroked the soft blonde curls.  Chris was on the couch, also asleep, and she tucked a blanket over the petite, curled-up body.  Then she mechanically readied herself for a short night's sleep, avoiding the reflection in the mirror, and fell into bed, hoping sleep would come quickly.

Behind toothpaste and mouthwash, she could still taste that kiss, like ashes in her mouth.  And the very bitterness of it was delicious.

~

Rachel was painting her nails at the kitchen table when Mark came home from work.

"Hey," she said.  Her smile was shy, cautious.  They were still working out how things were to be between them.  How much she could be herself before it all got broken again.

"Hi," he said, tasting bile in his words.  The sickness seemed to be getting worse, not better.

She stuck her tongue between her lips a little as she attempted laboriously to paint the nails on her right hand.  "Fuck it."

At his mild shock, she corrected herself ironically.  "_Darn it, then.  I can't do this__ with my left hand."_

"Want me to try?"

Rachel gave him her I-can't-believe-you're-such-a-loser look.  He found it even less endearing than usual.  "Come on," he said.  "Your mother let me do it."

She rolled her eyes and said, "Well, don't expect me not to remove it if you mess up."

He sat down, pulling his chair in close to the table.  Rachel stuck out her right hand grudgingly as if she were doing him a favor.  He supported her palm with his fingers, reflecting vaguely that she had slender, feminine hands like her mother.  Jen's hands and Jen's assertiveness.  She had almost nothing that was his.

Rachel watched suspiciously as Mark layered a painstaking coat of pink on her nail.  "How was school?" he asked.  (—Being a conscientious dad now, Greene? he thought.  Not so hard, when you know you only have to put in the effort for another few months.  Or weeks.)

"I got an A minus on my math test," she offered.  "I studied for it."

"Really?" he said.

"Don't you believe me?"

"Just asking," he said, backing off reflexively.

"I did study."  She looked down to check on her manicure.  "God, Dad, you're not supposed to paint all the way to the edges!  You have to leave a little tiny bit on the sides, so your nails look thinner."

"Sorry."  He tried to fix the mistake with his finger, but it only turned into a smudged mess.  

Rachel wrinkled her nose, but smiled.  "It's okay.  Just do the other ones the right way."  After a short pause, she said, "I even met with this pimply kid on the math team during my study hall, so he could tutor me."

"They all have pimples at this age."

"Maybe all _your friends had pimples."_

"Touché."  The second nail he finished was cleaner.  He surveyed his work proudly.  "See?  This isn't so bad, right?"

She giggled.  "Sure, whatever."

When he leaned closer to see better, he caught too deep a whiff of the nail polish.  His stomach rebelled, and he let go of her hand and pressed his fingers to his mouth.

"Dad?"

He spoke cautiously past growing waves of sickness.  "I'm okay."

"You look awful."

"I'm a little—"  He stopped.  "I think I'll go to bed.  Sorry I can't finish this."

She rose halfway up as he pushed his chair back with a clatter.  "Dad?  Are you okay?"

He muttered excuses and hurried out of the kitchen, hoping she didn't know enough about cancer treatment to make the connection.

Upstairs, once the illness had passed, he sat on his bed and took his address book out of the nighttable.  He hadn't replaced it for years, and hadn't even bothered to update Elizabeth's entry since her address became the same as his – until, as an afterthought, he'd scrawled her hotel number and address in the margins, in pencil.

He turned the pages to the "L" section.

"Hello?" Susan's voice came, after a few rings.

He smiled, just hearing her.  "Hey."

"Mark?"

"You don't know my voice," he pouted.

"You sound different."

"Well, I just finished throwing up."

"Oh, God," she said.  "I'm sorry, but did I need to know that?"  After a pause, she added, "Do you want me to come over?"

"I just wanted to hear a friendly voice for a second.  I don't want to make so many demands on you."

"If you want me to be there, I'm there."

He wanted to tell her to come, knowing that she meant the offer, and that her presence made even mortality seem liveable.  "I heard it made problems for you and Carter."

"Oh, you heard about that?  Yeah, he's a little – he's…"  She sounded like she didn't know what to say.  "He spends so much time pining after Abby, he assumes I must be pining after someone, too." 

She didn't say he was wrong.  Mark cleared his throat.  "Abby Lockhart, you mean?"

"Yeah," Susan said.  "I don't know her that well, but it seems she's got more love interests than she knows what to do with."

He fell back on the pillows, too tired to sit up any more.  "How was your day, otherwise?"

"Well, Weaver is practically foaming at the mouth after that dominatrix thing today – did you hear about that?  I even managed to get Gallant in trouble."

"You must be the only person who could do that," he said.

"Oh, I have many talents.  …But it means giving up an entire day for this stupid sexual harrassment class.  It's such a waste."

"What I don't understand is how Robert Romano could practically ruin Elizabeth's career because he had a thing for her, and he never got punished at all.  Meanwhile, you five get smacked into after-school detention."__

"Romano did what?  I'm sensing a good story here."

"He's an ass.  You can fill in the details."

"Oh, he's not that bad."

"That's what Elizabeth said," Mark said.

"Well, he hasn't caused any problems about that phone call this morning.  With Elizabeth, I mean.  Either he's waiting for an opportune moment, or he's really trying to do the right thing."

In the short pause that followed, his eyes drifted closed.

"Mark?" Susan asked.

He woke up.  "I'm sorry.  I think I just fell asleep for a second."

"You should get some rest.  Are you sure you're okay?"

A knock came at Mark's door.  He said a quick good-bye to Susan and called, "Come in."

Rachel slipped inside, wearing those pajamas of hers with big monkey faces on them, and waited while Mark made the effort to sit up and place the phone in its cradle.  "I'm going to go to sleep," she said.  "Do you need anything?"

Something in her expression made him wonder if she knew what was going on.  He kept his tone light.  "Good night kiss?"

She rolled her eyes and padded over to the side of the bed, planting a light kiss on his cheek.  He caught a look at her right hand – she hadn't yet fixed up his poor efforts.  

"I'll see you in the morning," she said.

He couldn't help but hope that this unspoken truce might last.  Illusory or no, the thought made him smile as he went to sleep.


	7. Who Have You Been?

A/N: Sigh.  I know.  I'm slow.  But this one was long and hard to write and college apps suck the way nothing has ever sucked before (except certain spoilers, but… ahem.  I digress.), so I'm busy.

Thanks for your nice comments (and more thanks, if y'all can muster up a couple comments on this installment  :)

**Chapter 7.  Who Have You Been?**

The house was quiet.

He let the door shut loudly behind him, and the sound brought no answer.  It wasn't unexpected – Gretel was almost as quiet as Ma these days.

Romano looked around his living room.  There she was – sleeping in front of the TV, which he'd left on.  He ruffled the shaggy hair on her head and left food for later.

The answering machine was blinking – six messages.  (But what had he expected?  That the administrative bullshit would be kind enough to remove itself from existence while he helped his mother?)

The first message, though, almost made him smile.  A deep voice, bearing the scratchy, phlegmy traces of hundreds of cigars.  "Bob Romano, it's your lucky day," he rumbled.  "Our chief of surgery retired – and you're first on my list for his replacement.  Come on, buddy, you're too old to work for a place that can't afford its own patients."

—You wish, Vic, Romano thought as he skipped to the next message.  Vic was director of personnel at Northwestern, and he insisted on calling every time there was an opening in surgery.  

Vic had always had quixotic leanings.

The rest of his messages bored him, so he left his replies until later and went upstairs to take a shower.  He had been sitting for so long in the ICU, waiting, that he felt he hadn't been clean in years.  And she still didn't wake, despite neuro coming around every day and amiably disagreeing on their diagnoses.

And – meanwhile – there was Elizabeth, or maybe he should say there wasn't Elizabeth.  Her visits to his mother yesterday magically seemed to coincide with the brief minutes that he was out of the room.

No matter how much he tried not to think about it, his mind kept returning to the question of what exactly he'd done in that pub to produce something so unexpected.  He'd intended nothing by touching her hand, nothing like that; he had been innocent and straightforward for once in his life.  Yet her fingers shook slightly under his and her eyes darted quickly, reflexively to his lips.

It must be inevitable, he thought, that he'd have to admit it to himself at some point: she was under his skin.  (More than that, although he didn't know what to call it.)  It would have been better for her if he had backed away from her instead of kissing her – but his reserves of generosity just weren't that deep.

Besides, it was worth it.

Romano smirked as he walked downstairs, calling a tongue-in-cheek farewell to his unconscious dog and slamming the door behind him.  Time for work.  He'd see _her_.

It felt like a high-school crush all over again.

His smiling face was assaulted by a gust of spring-tainted air too strong to be a breeze.  Chicago had only wind to offer, even today.

And one moment on a darkened street corner was still only a moment.  His mother was dying and Elizabeth Corday had kissed him, and still his life was achingly, tauntingly the same.

~

"I'm not surprised you ended it," Abby said with a shake of her head.  "After _that little performance, I'd rethink my relationship, too."_

They'd run into each other outside of the El station and conversation on the way to the hospital had run, inevitably, to gossip.  Susan was surprised as hell yesterday to find herself liking Abby – the Carter issue and the constant gloom aside, that last night at Susan's house hadn't endeared Abby to anyone.  But there was something to be said for the bonding power in being stuck in the middle of the same dreary romantic entanglement, Luka to Abby to Carter to Susan, on the day that outlasted all days.  Something, too, for the enjoyment of Abby's particular pure, dry, dour wit – in small doses.

"Even with Carter?" Susan jabbed.  "Carter, who _gets you?"_

Abby winced.  "If we're really going to be friends, you're going to throw that night back at me for the rest of our lives, I suppose."

"Maybe I can get you drunk again and find some new material."

"Please.  Anyway I shouldn't be –"

"What?" Susan said.

"Nothing."  Abby shook her head as they entered the hospital.  "So was he sad?"

"Heartbroken.  He even blinked, once."

"Oh, come on," Abby said, laughing.  "He didn't mind at all?  The guy has a massively fragile ego."

"It was the most amicable breakup I've ever had.  You know, it's odd, he'd had a crush on me seven years ago – but it wore off as soon as we were together."

"He has a thing for the unattainable."  Abby stood up.  "Weaver's going to kill us if we're late."

"Maybe we'll be sent back to detention," Susan suggested.

They grinned at each other, but Kerry Weaver showed up with her customary peremptory orders and redirected them to trauma one, where Mark was working a chest pain.

He looked up when the door opened and smiled.  "Susan, good."

"Need help?" she said, hurrying into gloves and a mask.

"Sudden onslaught chest pain," Mark said.  "Could be angina."

Susan hurried to the patient's side as Lily filled her in.  Water hammer pulse.  "Mark –" she said in a low voice.  "This is an aortic dissection."  Then, louder – "Someone page me a surgical consult!"

He snapped his head up to look at her.  She couldn't conceal her surprise that he'd missed what seemed terribly obvious.  He seemed about to say something, opening his mouth, but Susan cut him off before anyone else in the room could pick up on what she was seeing.  "Get them quickly," she directed Abby in a low voice.

Mark closed his mouth, defeated.

It wasn't thirty seconds before Romano was barging in, shoving Mark aside to examine the patient.  "They said it was emergent; what is this?"

"Possible…" Mark started.

After a second, Romano swiveled his head to look at Mark, startled at the pause.

Susan could see panic seeping into Mark's expression as he struggled to remember what she had just diagnosed.   "Possible – uh – possible… aortic dissection," he finished, as Susan was preparing to jump in.

"Thanks, that was … fast," Romano said, narrowing his eyes slightly in contemplation of Mark before turning back to his work.  "All right, page surgery and tell them we're coming up, this is cut and dry."

Mark backed away, looking nauseated.  As the patient and Romano disappeared out the door, Mark's eyes met Susan's across the room in what seemed a plea – for what, she didn't know.

The nurses dispersed, and he didn't move.  Finally Susan said in a low voice, "Mark, you need to talk to—"

Suddenly a drawer slammed shut behind her.  Susan turned to look– Abby had been rummaging around behind her, unnoticed.  She stopped, disconcerted, as Abby gave her an odd look.

"So did you two have fun yesterday?" Mark asked, changing the subject.

Susan laughed ruefully.  "Carter and Luka had a swordfight."

"It was really thrilling," Abby added dryly.

Mark laughed obligingly, but his eyes were still burning into Susan's, almost feverishly.  "A swordfight, huh?  That's, uh…  that's funny."

"Yeah, that pretty much decided me on the Carter issue," Susan said.

"You broke up with Carter?" Mark said.

"Long overdue, I think."  Susan smiled and, wary of saying anything else in front of Abby, left the room after brushing her hand against his, reassuringly.

Outside the room she set her teeth, resisting the impulse to go back inside and pull him close and hold him so he wouldn't look like that.  It seemed monstrous somehow – to follow the normal rules when he had so little time left – but she'd have to let him go through this alone.

~

 "She's awake," the nurse had said when Elizabeth entered Maria Tucci's room in the ICU.

Not really, Elizabeth wanted to say as she met the old woman's vacant stare.  

Someone from neuro was already there, looking solemn and important: Elizabeth's job would be over soon.

She wasn't sorry to hand off this one.  She'd always pictured Romano's mother, when she bothered to think about it, as some witty old lady who would give him insult for insult, and preside like a matriarch over raucous, conflictive family dinners.

Instead, _this _was the familial love they'd all speculated about that time he told the nurses about his Mother's Day plans.

"Has someone paged Romano?" she asked.

"He's in surgery."

"No, I'm here," said the voice from the doorway.  

He approached and stood slightly behind Elizabeth, close enough for her to feel the warmth of his body but still, tauntingly, out of her eyesight unless she turned her head.  This she staunchly refused to do.

But she heard his sharp intake of breath when he got a good look at his mother, at her open eyes.

"I see you're already moving in for the kill," he said to the others.  "What's the verdict?"

"We need more tests."

"Do you have any left to give her?"

"Why don't you cure the problem, then, Robert?" snapped one of the doctors, with the weariness born of familiarity with his chief.

"I'll give you the honor," Romano said.  "Keep me posted on every single test you do."

"This is really a case for—"

"Dr. Martin, you have ears, don't you?  I think I just said to keep me posted.  I didn't say I was going to take over the case and evaluate her brain function by myself."

"Wouldn't be unlike you," Martin muttered.

"I hope your courtesy serves you better when you're negotiating severance pay," Romano said mildly, "because it seems foreseeable the way you're going."  He touched Elizabeth's arm, and she felt a flicker of awareness in her skin.  "Dr. Corday, you have a minute?"

"Not right now."

"Thirty seconds then."

Elizabeth turned without looking at him and walked coolly outside.

In the hallway, once he'd joined her, with amusement and a hint of nervousness on his face, she said, "I thought you were in surgery."  Her arms were crossed, as if for protection.

"Bled out."

"Well?  What did you want?"

"Firstly, I need you to cover a meeting for me tomorrow at ten, Edson's first-year just failed his rotation and he's getting litigious.  Let him know it's really not worth the money it'll take to lose, and send him on his way.  I'd do it, but something's come up, so—"

"Fine," she said.

"Wait," he interrupted as Elizabeth took the opportunity to make her escape.

She knew what thattone meant, and she wasn't ready to discuss this yet, but she made herself stay still and face him.  His eyes swept her posture – leaning back against the window, waiting, sullen – and their path felt branded into her.  

As she'd half feared, none of her attraction to him had faded, even in the harshly honest, sterilized brightness of the hospital corridors.

"Before you run away again, can I say something?" he said, the smirk erased from his expression.

She swallowed.  "Of course."

"This morning, Mark was–"

Romano paused, running his tongue over his lip, and stared past her, as if he were distracted.

"Mark, what?"

He frowned slightly, then looked down at the floor and shook his head.  "Uh – I did a consult for him.  And it reminded me we haven't talked."

As if either of them had needed a reminder.  Elizabeth waited.

"Look, you're a big girl, so let's be mature about it," he said. 

Condescending bastard.

She gave him a fiercer glare than she'd ever given Mark.  Big girl, indeed.  She felt as furious as a thwarted three-year-old.  And rightly so.

"I know you've been trying to avoid having this out, but…  I get it, okay?  You're still married, you made a mistake, and it's over."

It sounded easy, when he said it like that.

"We can write everything off to your loneliness and my… opportunism, and move on.  I don't need a slap in the face to back off.  I'm going on my own."

Winded by the sudden reduction of her responsibility, Elizabeth felt her mouth fall slightly open.  "Thank you?" she managed after a moment.

"That sounded like a question," he said, his eyes burning with questions of their own.

"It wasn't."

He nodded, both an answer and a leavetaking, and walked down the hall.

Elizabeth's eyes followed the sweeping of his long coat for a moment.  Then she felt her pager go off in her pocket.

Downstairs she ruled out an MI (an obvious one, Kovac should've known it himself – but Robert was right, they really were helpless down here) and, on her way back up, was caught by the mention of Mark's name.

Slowing to a stop, Elizabeth turned quietly, instinctively.  Caught a glimpse of John Carter and Abby Lockhart at the admit desk.  Abby was tracing circles on the desktop with her fingers, Carter leaning over her with a shyly aggressive air about him.

She listened, wondering what they were saying about Mark.

"So we broke up," Carter concluded importantly.

Abby lifted her eyes.  "I heard," she said coolly.  "Susan told me."

"I'm glad she did it before I had to."

She pursed her lips in a dry smile.  "Oh, I'm sure you are, John."

"Look, maybe they are just friends, but there's always the question…"  He leaned closer, predatory, and Elizabeth resisted smirking when Abby leaned slightly away from him in passive resistance.  "It's one of those things where you work with each other every day and there's just … something … between you."

Abby deadpanned, "Like friendship?"

Carter shrugged.  "Even if they haven't admitted it, something else is there, and I don't want to deal with that.  They never had any closure, and now that Mark's sort of single, I just think it's better for me if –"

Elizabeth suddenly felt ashamed for listening to this.  She slipped away, wishing she'd had the sense to keep moving instead of listening to some resident's adolescent flirtation.

But Carter's words – spoken in that smugly certain voice – had some strange staying power in her mind.  Mark had been, not quite reticent, but vague about Susan when the latter's existence first came to Elizabeth's attention.  An old colleague, he'd said as they put together their wedding invitation list.  It seemed odd, that she had never heard that name spoken before.

(--Projecting, Elizabeth? she asked herself wearily.  –It's _you kissing coworkers in pubs, remember?)_

Mark was not like her, she knew.  He was careful, not impulsive – she'd realized that in the first days of their tentative relationship, he would never let himself get drawn into something until he knew his footing, until he'd thought it through.  And he was better than she was, in some ways: steadfast.  Not given to these aching, all-encompassing second thoughts.

She found it easier to think of Mark and Susan than to think about what had happened Friday night.  

But when Susan herself appeared at her cafeteria table at lunchtime with a bagel, a Styrofoam coffee cup and a tentative smile, her image in the flesh seemed much warmer, more human, than the shadowy figure of the past that Elizabeth had been considering in her own head.  

"Go ahead," Elizabeth nodded, and Susan sat down.

"Hi," she said, unwrapping the plastic from around her bagel and spreading butter lavishly over it.  Elizabeth watched her, trying not to be too obviously disconcerted.  "You're having a late lunch too, I see."

"I had another unnecessary consult," Elizabeth explained briefly.

"I'm sorry, I know we do that to you guys a lot," Susan said.  "Sometimes the residents just get nervous, or – over-thorough, I guess."

Elizabeth nodded and was silent, her natural hostility overtaking her for a moment.

After a short silence, Susan took a sip of coffee and winced.  "Every time I eat up here, I resolve to stop complaining about the coffee in the lounge."

"I stopped drinking it here a long time ago," Elizabeth said, smiling in spite of herself.

Susan laughed.  "I knew there was a reason I wanted to work at Northwestern instead.  Bet they have better coffee there."

"Northwestern?" Elizabeth said, momentarily confused.

"I applied for a job there."

"Didn't get it?" Elizabeth said, before she realized how rude that sounded.  If she spent any more time with Robert – or thinking about him – she would probably lose all her hair as well.

Susan exhaled disbelievingly.  "No, I – changed my mind."

"Right," Elizabeth remembered, "my husband convinced you." 

Another awkward pause ensued, and Elizabeth took a deep breath.  She wished she could ask Susan directly who she was in Mark's life, and who she had been.  But what could she say?  "Were you ever in love with my husband?  Are you now?"  Even better, "Is it just me, or has everything started to seem irrevocably mucked up?"

Before she could think of a way to broach the subject, her sense of common propriety took over, and she retreated into polite vacuity and asked Susan if she'd seen the Bulls game last night.

PS.  I am a know-nothing, as far as medicine goes.  Which is why I've stayed vague and probably horrifically inaccurate anyway; but whatever.  It's all about the Romano/Corday love anyway, isn't it?  :)


	8. Stranger Than Ever

Mrinalini, my fellow sufferer of Dillinger's, Binney and Cedarwood, there's a little shoutout in here for you.  Feel better, hon!

**Chapter 8.****  Stranger Than Ever**

Self-hatred was a new feeling for Susan.

She felt like a stranger to herself – and an enemy – when she woke, tangled in unfamiliar sheets and breathing in stale air.

She lifted herself on her elbow, checking out how the face of the guy she'd gone home with, Shawn something, looked in the light.  He was cleancut, not the kind of guy she normally picked up in bars: he'd been wearing a suit, winding down after work – she never asked what kind of work.  Lots of black hair, and full pouty lips, like a drummer masquerading as a professional.  He must be ten years younger than she.

_I have good taste_, she thought dispassionately.

She rose softly, trying not to wake him, showered in a hurry in the bathroom of his big, comfortable apartment, and tried not to hate the memory of last night.  After all, she had had so many one-night stands before, had gone to a million bars and picked up a million guys who didn't demand more of her than a night of good conversation and good sex.

But last night was different.  She'd seen Mark just before he left, passing her at the admit desk with his step unsteady and eyes seeming to accuse hers, as if he could somehow read the thoughts in her head.  The turmoil had only increased when she spoke to Elizabeth, to the point where she had to look away from Mark to protect herself.

This time she didn't want to have a girls' night with Abby or Jing-Mei; didn't want to try to fill the sudden void with warmth, or friendship.  She went to a bar knowing exactly what she'd do, knowing that she'd wake up like this and that whatever cold comfort she might have found wouldn't last till morning. 

As she searched in the bedroom for the watch she'd shed sometime last night, she heard a yawn and saw his eyes blink sleepily open.

"Watch?" she said quietly.

"There."  He pointed to a spot on the floor, near the wall.

Susan checked the time: she had a couple of hours to go home and change clothes.

"Need a ride somewhere?"

"I'll take a cab."

"I'll call you sometime," he offered perfunctorily.

She smiled kindly and said, "It was nice knowing you."

~

"Thanks for coming," Vic said as he and Romano emerged from the interview ahead of the rest of the Northwestern hotshots.  He took Romano's hand in one big paw and then slapped him on the back.  "Thought we'd never snag you."

"Haven't got it in the bag yet, Vic," Romano answered.  "There's still that small matter of the corner office to take care of."

"You crack me up."  Vic exclaimed, again, to the desk clerk: "He cracks me up.  You really do."

"Did I really appear in public with you when we were younger?"

"Only when we were drunk.  Now, come on, you don't need a corner office.  County only has you in that tiny closet, right?  I've seen it.  It's a shithole, pardon my French."

They stood outside the elevators – gold framed, Romano noted, not disapprovingly – and Vic rambled on about something inconsequential.

He had almost made up his mind to take the job.  He'd never intended County to take the rest of his life; it had only happened that way because he managed to snag that COS post, but he had a career to think of.

Besides, if he told himself the truth, he'd stayed partly because of Elizabeth, and it was time to get a grip on reality.  The two of them had more in their history than a lifetime could erase.  Better that he get over her; there were plenty of places to work, plenty of people.

Just as he was bidding an almost affectionate good-bye to Vic, he heard a voice behind him, dripping honeyed sarcasm.

"Well, well, well.  …If it isn't God's gift to medicine, right here in the halls of Northwestern."

Romano turned around leisurely; he already knew the voice and the Texas twang its owner tried so hard to hide.  "Cheryl," he said, shooting her an amused look.  "As kind as ever."

In the flesh.  She'd cut her hair, he noticed; it was curling about her ears now, and he was fairly sure it was blonder than it had been before.  She must be nearly forty now; he couldn't remember exactly.

She was smiling at him.  "Robert, I should have known you'd have sniffed out the coziest places to work."

"Actually, he hasn't yet," Vic interrupted, eyeing Cheryl with obvious appreciation.  The years had been kind to her, although there were laugh lines.  Still, she looked good for her age; and far be it from Vic not to notice.  "I'm trying to convince him.  I'm Victor Parker, by the way…?"

"Cheryl Winthrop," she said, giving him her bone-cracking handshake.  Good, Romano thought with private amusement; Vic would figure out this one was out of his league, and be on his way.

"I'm so sorry, I've got another meeting," Vic said, shaking out his hand, but still smiling at Cheryl.  "Hey, take over for me and convince Bob that Northwestern's better than CCGH, will you?"

"It was nice to meet you," Cheryl said with a small, sardonic smile.

She turned to Romano, who was still shocked at seeing her here.  "Well," she said softly.  "It _has _been a long time."

"What are you doing here?" he said, trying to cover his ground.

"I was just saying hi to Alex Veech in vascular," she said.  "My lunch date.  Cancelled now.  You surgeons are too damn busy."

"Alex," Romano mused, as the elevator doors opened and they stepped in.  "Would that be a girl or a guy?"

"A _woman_," she said automatically, as the doors slid closed.

They laughed, remembering the rhythm of their old conversations.

"Still holding your own on both sides of the fence, I take it," he said silkily.

"Well, _that _is a gift some of us are born with," she answered, just as pleasantly.  "Kind of like sensitivity, or… height."

"Oh, the exquisite subtlety of that one just hit me over the head with a frying pan," he groaned.

"What, no one dares insult you over at your hospital?"

"Not quite no one," he said.

She caught his expression when he imagined Elizabeth, and her laughter pealed in the closed space of the elevator.  "Oh, man."

"What?"

"I have never seen you smile like that, Robert."

 "I'm not smiling."

She cackled softly to herself, enjoying his discomfort.  "All right; if I pay for lunch, will you tell me who the hell you were just thinking about?"

"You can pay, but I'm not a talker."

Cheryl exhaled deeply.  "That much I already knew.  Well, let's eat anyway, shall we?  It's been a long time."

"All right.  You still paying?"

"No."

"Then I'll choose the place."  He'd take her to Doc Magoo's, just to make her vegetarian life difficult in revenge for all the strange brussel-sprout-y places she'd dragged him to years ago.

Cheryl rolled her eyes.

"I'd just been thinking about you," he said.

"Really."

"You ever…?"

She grinned.  "Never."  

--Goddamn smart-ass feminists, he thought.  

"So what's with the job hunting?  Midlife crisis?" Cheryl asked.

"Maybe," he said.  "I'd let myself get too attached to the place.  Should've moved on to something more my style a long time ago."

They stepped out of the elevator.

"By the way, Robert?"

"Yeah?"

"What happened to all your hair?"

~

"You're right, she has patellar tendinitis," Elizabeth told Kovac after examining his patient's knee.  "But surgery's not indicated for this type."

Luka looked back at his young patient, seeming concerned.  "There seems to be a lot of dead tissue."

"I'd still treat it conservatively," she said.  "Surgery is really best when it's the main body of the tendon."

He seemed about to argue further when Lydia opened the door to the next-door trauma room.  "Dr. Corday?" she said.  "Dr. Greene needs a hand on this scalp lac."

Elizabeth's first instinct was to run.  It had been a long time since she'd seen Mark.  "Uh – I'm on lunch break," she said.

"Romano's not here, and the others are busy.  Can't you do it?" Mark called from behind Lydia.

She took a deep breath.  "Yes, I'm coming."  To Luka, "Tell her to come back if the pain increases."

Mark stood straight and looked up at Elizabeth.  "Thanks," he said.

She nodded briskly and stepped to the other side of the partial scalping on the table.  Quickly figuring out what he was doing, she joined in, speaking as little as she could.  Across the gurney she could see Lydia watching, curious.  –God – she thought crossly – can't they just leave the gossip alone for one bloody moment?

Breaking the silence, Mark suddenly said, "How's Ella?"

"All right.  Not talking yet."

"There's a new aquarium opening this weekend.  Can I take her to see it?"

"Of course," she said, feeling guilty that he was asking so timidly.  "Mark, I didn't mean to steal your daughter – I just –"  She recalled that they weren't alone and stopped, chagrined.  They could have this conversation another time.

He looked up from his stitching and said with a little mischievous smile, "Now, can you show me your tip?"

Surprised, Elizabeth recalled using that line, way back in the first days of their relationship – when she, although wary of starting another relationship, had given into an impish whim and flirted with him over another scalp lac.  She smiled at Mark, at the modern version of him: balder, older, scarred.  "Got it."

They finished in a more friendly silence.  Elizabeth wondered why they couldn't be good to each other while they were together.  She had forgotten that behind his infuriating passivity, he was someone she could like.

"I'll call you to set up the time," he said before she left.  "I won't bring Rachel.  It'll be just the two of us."

She didn't answer that, except with a smile and a wave as she pushed her way through the door.  Finally, lunch.  She hadn't been so hungry in her life; it was hard not to respect Robert a little more for dealing with ridiculous administrative problems like that med school student she'd met with this morning.

Doc Magoo's was quiet today, she mused as she came inside and went straight to the counter.  It was a cold day, too cold for March.  Might snow later, even.

"Coke and a hamburger," she told the waiter, tiredly.  She had even begun to eat like an American now, she realized.

Waiting for her food, she found herself leaning her head on her hand.  Taking care of Ella without Mark, even with Chris's help, had begun to seem like too big a burden.  Yet the thought of going back, of returning to the marriage that had made both of them miserable and endangering her child to boot, was still unthinkable.  She knew that soon she'd have to admit to herself that she and Mark were never going to make it work.

--Mustn't think of it now, still have hours to work and you don't want to be upset… Elizabeth shook her head, trying to find something else to ponder; and her eyes met a dark, cool gaze that held them fast.

Robert Romano, she thought, looking back at the man sitting at the other end of the counter with a puzzled smile.  What was he doing at Doc Magoo's, since there had been something so important to keep him away from that meeting this morning?

Still looking at her, he addressed a few words to a companion – Elizabeth could only see the back of a head of blonde cropped hair, and a slender, petite body.  Then the other woman turned to face forward, and she caught a glimpse of a pointy chin and small, turned-up nose.  But Robert's eyes were still focused on Elizabeth.

A waiter plopped her hamburger unceremoniously down in front of her, and Elizabeth, forcing herself to ignore her self-consciousness, began to eat, looking straight ahead.  When she allowed herself to check Robert again, he wasn't watching her.

Sinking back into a reverie, this time about Ella and her dilatory language skills, Elizabeth ate her hamburger unthinkingly till she heard the smooth voice say, "How'd that meeting go this morning?"

She looked up.  Robert was sitting alone now, although there were still two plates where he and his friend had been sitting.  "Fine," she said.  "You skipped out on me to meet a woman for a lunch date?"

He chuckled – perhaps at her palpable annoyance.  She _wasn't _jealous.  Just upset that she had to fill in so that he could have a social life.  "No, no.  I was at an appointment.  I just ran into Cheryl by chance."

"Oh?" she said.  "Where'd she go?"

"Cell phone," he said, rolling his eyes and nodding outside, where Elizabeth recognized the blonde talking into a chic silver cell.

Elizabeth nodded, nonchalant.

"You know that woman I was telling you about – the fiancée?" he said.

"That's who you meant?" Elizabeth said.

"Yeah."  He smiled wryly.  "Hadn't seen her since it ended."

"She's pretty."

"Says you are, too."  He looked down at his coffee.  "Saw me looking at you."

Elizabeth felt herself flushing.  Then he lifted the coffee to his lips, and as his hand curved around the front of the cup she caught a glimpse of old cuts on his hands.

Still there.  She felt her eyes widen, remembering the feeling of his hand supporting her neck, the taste of that kiss, the look on his face when she pulled away –

No.  She wouldn't do this.  She needed to remember all the other things.  _Don't worry your pretty little head, as she tried to help Allison Beaumont.  __Hey, who looks out for ya, touching her hip with possessiveness that made her seethe, as he knew it would.  Lizzie this, Lizzie that (_Lizzie, you and I are a match made in heaven…_)_

She pulled herself up short and cast around for something to say.

"What's she like?  This Cheryl, I mean."

His eyes were darkly amused at her discomfiture.  "Smart as all hell," he said.  "First of all.  And a little too PC for my tastes.  Too easy to rile her up – but she was one of those people that you know are all right, just from looking at."

"She seems sweet," Elizabeth agreed.

"You look surprised," he noted.

"Well, yes," she admitted frankly.  "She doesn't seem like your type at all."

"What's my type?" he said, a dangerous note in his voice.  "Sharper-tongued, maybe, with curlier hair?  Bluer eyes?"

Elizabeth flushed, ashamed of her own egotism, and transparency.  She _had _been thinking of herself.  "I was thinking of that woman you brought to my – to my wedding."  Walking up the aisle she'd noticed the pair out of the corner of her eye, wanting to laugh at the incongruity: the tall, gracious, be-hatted blonde, and the man who had just told her she was beautiful, standing beside her like a village patriarch…

He accepted that.  "So you mean dumb and decorative."

"Yes," she said, laughing.  Then, more soberly, "Did you love her?"

"I was ready to marry her, Elizabeth.  What kind of person do you think I am?  --No, don't answer that.  I did love her."  He took another sip of coffee and said distantly, "I was an easier sell back then." 

"So what happened?"

"She broke it off."  He added with a self-deprecating shrug, "Ran away and broke my heart, the whole goddamned story of the ages."

"Why?"

"Don't know."

"Sure he does," came the smooth, lyrical voice from behind Elizabeth.  They both jumped to see Cheryl, standing behind Elizabeth with her hands on her hips.  She was speaking to Elizabeth, but her eyes and her mocking smile were focused intensely on Romano.  "I did it because I wanted a family, not a lifetime of trying the same locked door.  The man doesn't know how to tell you what he's feeling.  Or doesn't want to, or didn't think I was worth it."

She finally looked at Elizabeth with a mischievous little grin.  "You think it's hard working for him, try _waiting for him."_

Awkwardly Elizabeth gave her a tight smile, avoiding Romano's eyes.  His sigh was almost inaudible as he put down his fork.  "So this is what people mean when they say "girltalk."  You two done sharing yet?"

"I have more stories, but that's the best one," Cheryl said silkily.  She winked at him with a mixture of affection and leftover melancholy, and bent to kiss him good-bye, near his mouth.  "Nice running into you, Robert," she said with a kind smile.

"Always a pleasure," he returned.

When she had gone, Romano gave Elizabeth a level, defensive glare.  "Might want to close your mouth there, Lizzie.  Not that it isn't attractive to watch you gape, but the entire restaurant can tell how shocked you are."****

Elizabeth closed her mouth, unthinkingly obedient.  He grinned humorlessly.  "Your docility today warms my heart."  

Then he flicked a twenty onto the counter and strode out the door.


	9. Dancing Around Reality

Couple of shoutouts:  First of all thanks everyone for reviewing, it's great encouragement :)  Valhalla, thanks for mentioning this on TWoP – so nice of you.  And Christina, thanks for reminding yourself to update, so I didn't have to ;)  – it was a treat to read, as usual.

"Guess Who" – let me think about that suggestion.  *waits .47 seconds* Um, no.  LOL.  Go and write your Mary Sue yourself ;)

At T-minus fourteen, here's a dose of twilit solace for us Cordanos and our angst-ridden quartet.

Oh, and some of the dialogue will seem familiar.  That's because I stole it :p

**Chapter 9.**   Dancing Around Reality ****

Susan was sharing a box of donuts with Jerry at the admin desk when Mark tapped her shoulder.

"Susan," he said in a low voice.  "Michael Shapiro is in there asking for you."

"Coming," she said after a deep breath.

Just before she started to follow Mark back to curtain two, Jerry exclaimed, "Don't throw that away!"

Susan laughed and handed over the half-eaten donut she'd been about to discard.  "Go ahead, cholesterolize away."

"Look who's talking," Jerry snarked back through a mouthful of chocolate-frosted.

 Her smile faded as she approached the room where she'd left her and Mark's end-stage AIDS patient waiting for an ICU bed to free up.

"Hi," he croaked when he saw her, an almost-smile flitting across his face, as Malik got him ready for transport.

"Hey, Michael," she said, approaching him.  "You comfortable?"

"It's like ... sitting at home… by the fire," he joked laboriously.

She smiled and indicated the scratch marks on her arms from a feisty five-year-old.  "Nice to have a patient with a sharper tongue than fingernails."

When he didn't answer, Susan said, "Are you sure you don't want me to call your wife?"  She'd already asked this – and Michael had said it was his fault she was infected, that he wouldn't make demands on her after doing what he'd done.  

But he looked so lonely.

"No – no."  He was hardly able to form a sentence.  "She – was right to – kick me out."

"Your son?"

"No."  Vehement.

She could see Mark shaking his head in deterrence from just out of Michael's viewpoint.  Right.  Right – this was about what Michael wanted.

Susan felt her throat blocking.  Ridiculous, she thought, it's only a patient.  She'd always been impatient with this kind of sentimentality, the selfishness of taking a patient's story and turning it into the doctor's.  Yet this lonely death was more than she could watch with equanimity.

But she did, because she had to.  She and Mark, since their shifts were almost over, waited in the room till someone came to get Michael.

When he had been taken up to the ICU, she and Mark stood alone in the room, Susan staring blankly at the spot where the gurney had been.

After a long time Mark said, "Nice note to end a shift on." 

"Ha, ha," she retorted drearily.

"When Susan Lewis needs cheering up there's definitely something wrong with the world," he said, stepping cautiously closer.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm Little Miss Sunshine," she said.  Querulous – that was the word for her tone of voice, she thought savagely.  She was pitying herself, when it should be all about the patient, or Mark.

"This one got to you?" he said.

She nodded mutely.

"I always wish I could make it less lonely for them," he said.

"Yeah."  
"But it's his choice."

"That's the worst part.  They were only a phone call away."

Mark blinked, considering his next words.  "It's harder than that."

"I know.  I meant – the idea that he didn't think they would come, even for this.  …I don't know."  She realized belatedly that she wasn't good at this, that she and Mark used to be able to talk, but somewhere along the line joking had become easier for her than telling the truth.

"So he should've been forgiven just because he was dying?"

"He shouldn't be dying alone."

Mark sighed.  "No other way to go about it, I'm afraid.  No matter how many people are sitting by your bedside."

Susan choked on whatever she'd been about to say.

Still cautious, he reached out, as if to invite her into a hug.  Willingly she leaned her forehead against his chest as his arms closed gently over her shoulders.  As she breathed in deeply to quell the shakiness, she thought she felt him drop a light kiss on her hair, but couldn't be sure.

"It's okay," she heard him murmur lamely.

The moment of vulnerability passed quickly, and she withdrew, saying ruefully, "Don't make me cry."

"I wouldn't dream of it," he said.  "I wish I could make you smile."

Silence.  She was battling the impulse to hug him again, just for that comment.

"But let me try to cheer you up," he said after a moment.  "You've been taking care of me so much."

"Well, you needed it.  I'm just being ridiculous, to feel like this."

He pouted.  "I feel undervalued now."

She swatted his shoulder, or the air near his shoulder, afraid to hurt him.  "Self-centered, aren't we?"

He ducked, grinning.  Then returned to friendliness, to mildly anxious kindness.  "You're off now, aren't you?" he said.  "Don't go home alone."

She lifted her eyebrows.  "Well, if you put it like that…"

Mark smiled, nodding his head towards the door.  "It finally feels like spring out there," he said.  "What say you and I take advantage of the temperature and have a little stroll?"

Susan acquiesced without a fuss – God, she thought, I've gotten easy in my old age.

As they went out the door, his hand brushed hers in a gentle signal.  She wondered what could possibly have possessed Elizabeth to leave him.

~

"QAs?"

Elizabeth looked up at Robert, who had flung open the door and was crossing his arms, sharply examining the sight of her loosened hair and the weary hand propping up her chin.

"As usual.  I was supposed to be off ages ago."

"I had a call from Northwestern today," he said.

Elizabeth noticed his odd tone and ran back over the possibilities.  Was she in trouble?

"They'd chosen their finalists earlier," he said, and Elizabeth still didn't know what he was talking about, "but they only just now decided who they want as their new chief of staff."

She knitted her eyebrows.  "So?"  But she knew what was coming.

"I just gave Anspaugh notice," he said.  "I'll be gone in eight weeks."

She felt her lips fall open slightly.

"Surprise," he said.

This felt like more than surprise.  She felt… what was the word…? gutted.  "You're… leaving County."

"Correct," he said.

"But you can't!  I mean – you've always been here."

"All the better reason to make a change, my dear," he purred sarcastically.

She tossed her hair back, collecting her wits, and straightening her face.  –Must ignore that twist in my stomach, saying that working here, working with him, is all I know.

Robert's eyes seemed to search her for wavering resoluteness, and she set her lips firmly.  Then he said, "I wanted to let you know, especially."

How to respond to that?

"—Because I'll be pushing for you as my replacement for chief of surgery."

"Oh—" she gasped, relieved.

"It shouldn't be too tough a competition," he said.  "You're already associate chief, and you've filled in for me on occasion, so if you're willing to do a little ass-kissing—"

"_Robert_…"

"Or politicking, whichever you choose to call it, you have a good chance at the post," he finished complacently.

"I – I – uh –"  She pressed her fingers to her temples.  "Thank you."

"No problem.  I'll be highly amused to see what happens if you get this job and Kerry gets moved to chief of staff."

"Ugh," she said automatically.

He arched an eyebrow.  "Kerry's thoughts exactly, I'm sure."

"You can't possibly want Kerry as chief of staff."

"I don't, but Anspaugh thinks the sun shines out of her uptight little ass.  Besides –" he winked – "it's not my problem.  It's yours."

She only smiled a moment.  "So you're really leaving County."

"Yes, hence the whole 'Correct' thing earlier," he said.  "Lizzie, I think even your Mahk is quicker on the uptake than this."

"Well, I –" She'd started to defend herself, until his dig at Mark caught up to her.  "Robert!"

"Oh, don't go sensitive on me now," he said.  "Look, speaking of Mark…"

She pushed back her chair, wary.

"The other day, when I tried to – uh – to talk to you about –"

Suddenly a desk clerk shoved in past Romano to hand Elizabeth a stack of papers.  She could scarcely focus on what the woman was saying; she was too curious about Romano, whose unreadable face attracted her gaze past the slender shoulders of her interlocuter.

"Dr. Corday?  Dr. Corday?"

"_What_?"

"Uh – these forms –"

Elizabeth missed the explanations and nodded perfunctorily.  She could figure the forms out herself.  What she couldn't figure out was what he was about to tell her – why his eyes were so dark and so deliberately flat across the room.

When the desk clerk had gone, she waited for him to continue.  After a long pause, Romano said, "We can't do this inside."

"Do what?  I'm terribly busy."  Why did all her instincts say to resist him, she wondered?  (Because the suggestion of a twilit stroll is so tempting, she answered herself.  Because you'll have better control over yourself here, in the office, within the bounds of the familiar.)

"The paperwork can wait, Elizabeth.  This can't."

Without a word she left her papers disheveled on her desk – well, hell, it was her desk – and snatched her light spring coat from the hook on the door as she passed him by.

Outside, they walked quietly down the sidewalk, and to the bridge  Elizabeth tried not to guess what he would say – all her predictions were suddenly outlandish, and far beyond her ability to rein in. .  Tacitly, it seemed agreed that he would start talking when he thought they were far enough away from the hospital.

In the gray dusk their silence was easy and drowned out by the passing cars; his face, when she allowed her eyes to slide sideways as they were always itching to do, was tight-lipped and darkly resigned.

She shivered slightly.  There was something chilling about that expression.

"Cold?" he said.

"I'm fine."  Now that he mentioned it, though, she huddled slightly into the thick wool of her sweater.  It was cozy protection against a nippy but somehow inviting spring night.

"Have you noticed what's been going on?" he said finally, as they dawdled side by side along the water.

"With… you?"

"With Mark."

She frowned.  "What do you mean?"

He sighed.  "Let me preface this by saying I'm probably doing utterly the wrong thing by getting into this mess.  But that's what I'm good at, and I'm leaving and you should know the truth."

"God, just say it," she burst out in a flame of irritation.  "Stop procrastinating, you've never done that before."

Robert laughed sharply.  "All right, then.  A week or so ago, I was in a trauma with Mark and he couldn't say 'aortic dissection.'  Couldn't even remember the diagnosis.  And then he just stood there, like he was going to cry."

When she was silent, he touched her arm and stopped them both from walking further.  "Do you understand me, Elizabeth?"

She fumbled for words.  God – Mark – just when she thought she might know which way she was supposed to go, this came and tumbled everything into confusion again – "You think it's back," she forced out.

"The…"

He stopped.  —Behold the great Rocket Romano displaying a flash of tact.  "The tumor," she said bluntly.

 "Yes," he said, his voice very soft, and gentle.

She felt her face start to crumble and immediately her impulse was to hide this from Robert.  Blindly turning away from him, she took three steps and felt the edge of the railing dig into the tender flesh underneath her ribs, stopping her.

There she stayed, one hand to her eyes, until a small sniff confirmed what must have been obvious anyway.  Beneath the roaring in her ears and the insistent background of the gurgling water below her, she picked out his padding footsteps: only two.  He was behind her.

"Elizabeth?"

Shaking her head, she tried to control her breathing, her tears.

His hand touched the back of her head, smoothing her hair with unexpected, unimaginable tenderness.  She flinched away; and sensed him moving slightly to the side and leaning, like her, over the water.

"And he didn't tell me," she suddenly burst out.

"Maybe he was protecting you."

Elizabeth felt a sudden burst of anger.  Maybe she wanted to be protected – maybe she didn't want to be confronted with this kind of truth, to have to understand what she was feeling and figure out how to hide it from Robert at the same time.  "What did you expect me to do with this?" she demanded, her restraints consumed by irrational anger at Robert.  "Run back to him?  Go back home and watch him die?"

He hesitated, but his answer was firm.  "Yes."

"We've broken up," she said.  "I thought we'd grown apart.  He'd probably rather be with Susan Lewis—"

"_Stop_," he interrupted harshly.

"I don't think I can do it again.  Not this way."

He seemed to be thinking about how to answer that.  Finally, "Is he your husband?"

Elizabeth looked down at the ring, that she still hadn't the heart to take off or renounce.  "Yes."

"Do you…"  She could hear him swallow above the motion of the water, and shift his weight and shake his head to himself.  "Well.  Never mind.  Look, I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but I can't tell you what to do in this case."

She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes for a moment, almost enjoying the bright painful red that clouded her vision – and then, hoping the tears were disappeared and knowing they weren't, she looked at him.  "I know."

He seemed about to say something when Elizabeth heard a very different voice behind her, calling, "Elizabeth?"

Elizabeth turned to see Mark and Susan walking towards them.  (--_Of course, he's with her, she thought crossly.)_

Robert had detached himself from the railing and begun walking to meet the others halfway.  His hand lightly brushed her back, in support or in condescending guidance – she couldn't tell.  As usual.

They slowed to a stop, all four of them.

"Nice night to go walking," Mark said with an attempt at savoir-faire, his voice falling flat on the silence.

Robert seemed briefly amused.  "That it is."

In the pause that followed, Elizabeth found everyone's eyes on her as she desperately to decide on something to say, or do, to break the suffocating stillness. 

Elizabeth looked at Susan, whose face was streaked like her own with tears; who shouldn't be here, she thought vaguely, and shouldn't be suffering from the twists and turns of someone else's marriage.  Then at Mark, whose eyes were soft and questioning; who had grasped at heroism and retrieved only a lonely death.

She was too much of a coward to look at Robert for long; she didn't want to wonder whether his kindness just now was genuine friendship or something more generous and more staggering.  But she could feel the warmth of his arm as it lightly touched her own. 

The four of them had been dancing around reality, and she was beginning to wonder how much of this hallucinatory tangle of Robert and herself and Mark and Susan lay in her own mistakes. 

There wasn't much left for her to do.  She stepped away from the magnetism of Robert's body.

"Mark," she said quietly.  "Let's go."

Obediently Mark fell into step by her side as they began retracing her steps to the banks of the river, leaving Susan and Romano standing like question marks behind them.

Hey, it wouldn't be ER without a good dose of anviliciousness…

Feedback always welcome, if you feel like making my day :)


	10. Like Goodbye

Thanks for the reviews guys!  

Robeth – well, of course I wouldn't dare stand in the path of the Truest Love that ever gave viewers frostbite from sheer lack of heat …  

Valhalla – I'm still not a happy little Cordano but I'm glad someone is :)

*twinkle twinkle* I like you, man, but you scare me.  (Kidding!)  And wanting to kick Mahk sometimes is totally not a bad thing, it's a normal human reaction.

Sparky015 1: Your copious exclamation points are always fun to read. Thanks :)

The style of this one ended up being very unusual for me.  I hope it's not too clichéd, sappy, etc. – I'm so far beyond my personal experience here.  Just hold on and we'll get back to the gritty Cordano angst next chapter…

**Chapter 10.**  Like Goodbye****

"Well," Romano said, looking wryly at Susan.  "Alone at last."

She lifted her hands in a kind of helpless question.

"I told her," he remarked.

"Told her what?"

"Tumor's recurred, hasn't it?"

"Yes."

"That's what you were doing at his house."

Susan seemed wary, as if she thought that was a veiled jab.  She knew him too well.  "Yes."

"Was he ever going to say anything to Lizzie?"

"I kept telling him to."

"You're a regular little Girl Scout, eh?"

"What's that mean?" she said, leaning against the bridge, looking out.

"Oh, I don't know," he said, giving up.  Not much more fun for the pot than it was for the kettle.

"So," she said, looking at him.  "What now?"

"I suppose they live happily ever after.  Greene dies happy and comforted; Elizabeth raises their daughter alone."

"I'm glad they're working things out."

"Yeah.  Me too."

"Want to split a taxi?"

"You going north?"

"Yeah."

"Okay."

They both seemed too tired for conversation.  Romano found himself thinking back to that moment on the bridge, when all four of them had faced each other in a circle.  Moment of truth and all that crap.  And Elizabeth had walked away with Mark.

Well, good.  It would make it that much easier to leave County.

~

"What is it?" Mark said when they were at the end of the bridge, hesitating before going back to the real world.

Elizabeth stood still and her eyes were dry from sheer willpower.  "Robert told me something," she said steadily.

His eyes dilated in panic, and she said, "You've had a recurrence, haven't you?"

He sagged.  "Yes."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want you to come back just because of this."

Well, she rather admired him for that.  Still, "I wish you had."

"I'm sorry."

"No – I'm sorry."  She repeated herself.  "I'm sorry, Mark.  I know we've both made our mistakes, but I think mine – or my biggest, anyway – was not being willing to work hard enough.  When things got too difficult, I ran away." 

"This isn't your fault."

"Isn't it?"

"If I had just kept Rachel under control, none of this would have happened."

"Well, let's not do this," she said.  "It doesn't matter."

"No.  Nothing does."

"There's no chance, then?" she said, feeling the last bit of hope sink out of her.

"Not this time."

His voice was eerily calm.  She felt herself quiver with threatening tears and then tamped it down furiously.  But Mark, noticing this effort, bent to kiss her forehead, and she closed her eyes in another onslaught of emotion.

She loved him.  He was her husband; he was the man who had slept by her side for two years, who had sympathized with her loneliness in America when no one else quite understood.  His death, even if it had come during their estrangement, would leave a void.

But where did that put Susan? another side of her wondered.  Where did that put all those fights they'd had before, all the times Elizabeth had thought she couldn't stand another day without her freedom…?  She and Mark could be friends now.  It didn't seem like there had ever been more, like she had ever promised her body and heart and life to this man.  The idea was incongruous at best.

She opened her eyes.  "You've been waiting for me, haven't you?"

"Of course."

So easy for him, she thought bitterly.  He would make one choice and then another, as if life were a linear path, a progression.  And he would barrel straight along that path, unstoppable, unaware of the chaos pressing in on all sides.

He looked over at her, his eyes glossy and wide in the dark.  "Does this mean you'll come home?"

The word sounded odd.  This wasn't her home, she thought.  America, England – they had both been unsatisfying, she had never found a place that was wholly hers.

She decided to let him tell her where her home was. 

"Mark," Elizabeth said directly, "you're dying."

He froze, like she had slapped him.  The reality of that sentence might have been too much, but she didn't know how to soften the truth.  She switched tactics.  "I want you to think about how you want to live the time you have left.  It's your decision."

"What?" he said breathlessly.

"You decide," she said.  "Do you want me back?"

"I – of course –"

She cut him off.  "No, don't act like it's obvious.  I think you have a choice – and I think you'll know what I mean if you think about it."

He looked enlightened, as if his situation had never quite been presented to him this way, even in his own private thoughts.  "You mean Susan," he deduced after a few seconds.

"Of course," she said with a glimmer of impatience.  "Mark, I –" she couldn't even say the word anymore, without hesitating–"I love you…"

He touched the back of her hand with quiet affection.  (—_Very_ quiet, some unrepentant, mocking part of her added.)  "I love you, too."

"…I just can't make every decision.  This one has to be yours."

"All right."  He turned away from the water, looking weary.  "But I don't know how."

"Too bloody bad."

He smiled at that, and she, knowing already what he'd do, smiled back.

~

Sitting in the back of the cab, Susan fumbled for the thin wallet somewhere inside her purse.  The fare was ridiculous, she thought.  Romano, startlingly, waved her aside.  "I'll get it," he said.

She had learned to distrust that sort of chivalry, and its implications.  Men like him wanted nothing better than to remind her of her delicacy; a kind of backlash, an assertion of superiority.  "No—"

"If that's your apartment, I'm thinking cab fare is beyond your budget," he said.  Then, more expressively, with a glance at the ramshackle place, "_Way beyond."_

"Always courteous," she smiled wryly, relaxing at his customary rudeness.

He shook his head.  "Well, don't expect any more ostentatious shows of generosity after tonight."

"You're not a long-term kind of guy?" she teased.

That elicited a hint of a real smile, which surprised her to no end.  "Not at all.  But we have a lot in common tonight."

~

Mark walked Elizabeth to her hotel and paused outside the door of the lobby.  She had recovered from before; her face was smoothed out for public consumption.

"You can come up and see Ella," she said.  "She misses you, I think."

He smiled.  "I miss her too."

"I don't want to distance you from her," Elizabeth said.  "Not now.  I would have done things differently—"

She stopped, looking chagrined.  Mark didn't know what she was thinking and realized belatedly that this had often been the case.  There had been so many moments when she was cold or unhappy and the best he had been able to do was wait it out, smooth things over.

Upstairs, in the neat, dreary little hotel room, they sent a drowsy Chris away with cab money and Elizabeth went to change into pajamas.  Mark stroked Ella's forehead as she lay in the crib.

"I love you," he whispered to the blinking child.

She didn't seem to understand.  He stifled a stab of panic; it wasn't the Ecstasy, it was just that all children developed at their own rate.  Comparisons were destructive, he'd seen enough panicky parents to know that.

Elizabeth emerged from the bathroom and Mark saw that she'd been crying again.

Before he left she hugged him gently in a spontaneous gesture that was unusual even during their best times, and he noticed the gentleness, so unlike Elizabeth.  It felt like a good-bye.

Please r/r!  Thanks  :)


	11. Kodak Moments

This one's for PMC.  We'll miss you babe!  

Rocket Launcher – hey, you're back!  Yeah, college apps are a "piece of pie"… except, not :)

Britgirl2003 – Well, that depends on your definition of happily ever after :)  But there won't be any maudlin death scenes, I'm really trying to go easy on the tearjerking.

Sparky0151 – Here's the Cordano you ordered – would you like some Cherry Garcia with that? ;)

**Chapter 11.** Kodak Moments****

Mark had just managed to stop worrying when he ran into Elizabeth, quite literally.  Getting on the subway, he'd sat down to try to stop the pounding headache when he felt a foot smash his toe and a voice say absently, "Excuse me."

He looked up, startled, when he heard the distinctive, accented tones.  "Elizabeth?"

She stopped threading her way through the crowd, and smiled tentatively.  "Oh, Mark!  I didn't even realize it was you – I'm sorry, did I hurt you?"

"No, no."

Elizabeth lifted her eyebrows in a question, and he nodded – "Go ahead, sit."

She took the seat next to him and leaned forward, clasping her hands on her knees.  "How are you feeling?"  
"I can't say I slept that well last night."

She smiled and for once, he didn't feel like his mere presence got on her nerves.  But they didn't have anything more to say to each other; a comfortable, almost placid silence reigned as the train roared to their stop.

When he got to the ER, taking leave of Elizabeth with another mutual, only vaguely awkward smile, he joined Susan, who was also arriving.

"Ready for another wonderful day of vomit and blood?" she asked him.

He rubbed his hands together.  "Bring it on."

In fact, he was enjoying himself during every minute he worked; he knew it wouldn't be more than a few months at best until he couldn't work anymore.  But the stress took its toll on his eye muscles, and soon he found himself turning to Susan again.

"Hey," he said, joining her in a down moment at the desk.  "Like the effect?"

He blinked, to demonstrate, and his right eye stayed insistently open.

"Need some drops again?" she guessed, feigning annoyance.

Mark pouted.  "Please?"

"Oh, all right.  C'mere."

He sat in a chair, and Susan's hands were soft on his face, tilting his head back; her face concerned and gentle.  The bustle of the activity around the desk faded to a tiny, claustrophobic space of smiling friendship and buried, melancholy affection.

"So I woke up this morning and there was a _cockroach in my bed," she remarked.  "Can I just say that it wasn't a pleasant start to my day?"_

"What's wrong with cockroaches?" he said.  "I had a pet cockroach when I was little.  Kept it in a little glass cup with a top on it."

"Oh, Mark.  Gross."

He shrugged.  "I liked bugs."

"Bugs are one thing; cockroaches…"  Susan shook her head.  "You worry me."

Kerry passed by them and did a double take, coming back to stand quite near Mark and say quietly, "Mark, is your eye okay?"

He blinked, and Susan stepped away.  "I'm having Gamma treatment again," he explained in a low voice.  There was no point in keeping the secret, now that Elizabeth knew.  "This is what happens."

Behind her impassive face Kerry seemed slightly regretful, knowing what that meant.  "I'm sorry," she said in a clipped voice.  "Let me know if there's anything I can do to help."

"Not really," he murmured as she walked away.

~

"You paged me?" Elizabeth demanded as she entered the scrub room.

She encountered two faces – Anspaugh and Robert – but the latter was the one that caught her attention, since her arrival brought an instant's tumult to its features before they settled into Romano's usual suavity.

"We got swamped with a couple of GSW's," he said.  "I had a transplant scheduled in an hour, so I need you to take one of them."

"Fine," she said.

He cocked her a grin.  "I owe you a favor."

She fielded the grin with her own.  "I'll need an assist.  Edson's on?"

At Anspaugh's confirmation, she had a nearby nurse page Dale Edson and started scrubbing in.

"So, how are Lizzie's prospects at replacing me?" Romano asked Anspaugh casually.

"Well," Anspaugh said, directing his words to Elizabeth, "it's an interesting possibility.  And you know I have nothing but the highest respect for you."

"Ah, Elizabeth, you should be blushing by now," Romano said, his eyes on Elizabeth.

"I'm not that easy," she returned with a glimmer of a smile.

She knew that she was confusing him.   That his eyes every so often flicked down to the wedding ring pinned to her lapel: he knew nothing of the decision she'd reached last night.

Well – she corrected herself – _she _still wasn't sure what decision had been reached last night.  In the meantime perhaps it would be better to refrain from looking at him.

Definitely better.  He wasn't the only one feeling confused right now.

Anspaugh, meanwhile, was telling Elizabeth, "…But of course a committee will need to conduct a national search."

"Of course," she said.

"I am very supportive of this, though," he said with a direct look.

She smiled.  "Thank you."

"I hate to interrupt the Kodak moment," Robert said, "but where the hell is Edson?"

"I'll page him again," offered the nurse.

"Why don't you do that – oh, never mind!  Here comes our recalcitrant hero…" Romano said as Edson came in the door.

Elizabeth, impatiently, added, "Didn't you hear your pager?"

"I was tied up in a phone call," Edson said, annoyed.  "I got here as quickly as I could."

"Stop the excuses and scrub in," Elizabeth said.  "I need an assist on a GSW."

Edson sighed.  "All _right_."

"Hey Lizzie, you think the underlings are going to be this grumpy at Northwestern?" Romano asked.

"I think it all depends on how their boss behaves himself," Elizabeth said pointedly.

"Ah, I see how it is," he said, feigning hurt.  "And here I was thinking losing your beloved boss would break your heart."

Their eyes met from the opposite sinks, facing each other, and Elizabeth felt her stomach twist up again, as it had last night.

"Well."  He finished scrubbing, his gaze still steady, and walked across the room, passing close enough for her to feel a slight current of air against her arm.  His face, as he turned at the door for a couple of parting shots, had softened into something like affection.  "I have a feeling none of my colleagues at Northwestern will be quite as easy on the eyes as you, but maybe they'll be better at brown-nosing."

Elizabeth started to retort, but he had directed his attention back to the unfortunate Dale.  "In the future, if you're going to be a drama queen, can you figure out a way to make your dramatic entrance in a way that doesn't involve Dr. Corday waiting ten minutes for you?" he said as he went outside.

"Ugly little bastard," Edson muttered in the silent scrub room.

Elizabeth found herself jumping instinctively to Robert's defense.  "Yes, he's often mentioned his envy of your rugged good looks and sparkling charisma."

"The man is impossible, I don't know how you manage to work so closely with him without clobbering him."

"Firstly, he's incredibly punctual," Elizabeth said.

Anspaugh turned his head to mask a chuckle.  "You know, you two, Robert's left the room, so we can act like civilized human beings if we want to."

Edson shook his head.  "God, I'll be glad to see him go."

"That's one sentiment I'm sure Dr. Corday reciprocates," Anspaugh said.  Elizabeth didn't respond, so he continued, "Personally, though, I think the guy is the best surgeon we've got.  –Present company excepted, of course," he added with a nod that Elizabeth was pleased to see directed exclusively at her.

She acknowledged the nod and finished scrubbing up.  "Dr. Edson, I'm starting," she said curtly.  "I still need an assist, if it fits your leisurely schedule."

As she backed out of the room and into the nearby OR she heard him gripe to Anspaugh, "That one can be as bad as Romano sometimes."

_Oh, Dale_ – Elizabeth wanted to say – thinking of herself and Robert over the years, and their finely honed, back-and-forth rhythm of challenge and parry, strike and counter – _you have no idea_.

~

Susan yawned slightly as she entered the suture room.  Her patient was young, twenty-six or so (god, she was calling twenty-six-year-olds young – how middle-aged) and be-spectacled and quite lawyerly.

"Hi, Blake," she said.   "I'm Dr. Lewis, I'm going to stitch up your leg."

She'd volunteered for this one because the day was slow and she didn't have the heart to wake up Gallant, who had fallen asleep at the admit desk, or Mark, who had crawled into an empty room to sleep several hours ago.  Besides, maybe this way she could avoid being sucked into another major case during her last fifteen minutes.

Blake was silent and unfriendly, and Susan, who normally welcomed the chance to chat with her patients, rather appreciated the silence.  Concentrating on stitching up the tattered skin on his leg, she found her thoughts drifting back to Mark.

There had been few times when she'd allowed herself to take these newfound – or newly rekindled – feelings for Mark seriously.  After all, he was her friend, and married, and dying.  But last night, even today while she helped him with his eye, she had realized just how far she'd let herself go.

She knew he was going downhill fast.  It wasn't just the frailty she could feel every time she touched his skin, but his mind wasn't working as well as it used to.  And she couldn't stand that, knowing that what had mattered to Mark more than anything was being able to take care of people; knowing things were drawing to a close and she was running out of time even to talk to him, to be near him.

"That hurt?" she asked Blake absently when he drew in a tiny breath.

"No," he said.  "It's fine."

She slipped back into concentration, into the present.  Once she'd finished, time was up, and she left Blake with a hint of relief.

The note on the door opposite her said, "Sleeping… don't wake."  Then, smushed like an afterthought in the small space at the bottom, "Please."

Oh, Mark.  She laughed and opened the door, wanting to tell him he could go home now.  Their shift was over.

He was on his back in his usual sleeping position, long legs spread slightly so that his feet didn't hit the end of the bed.  Susan sat down on the bed and called softly, "Mark… wake up…"

Mark's eyes opened and he looked up at her in innocent sleepiness.  "Susan," he mumbled.  "I dreamed about you."

"Yeah?" she asked.  "What about me?"

He woke up more fully and his expression was wondering, as if he were seeing her anew.  "You were a mother," he said.  "You had a little baby.  A boy."

She looked away.  This wasn't a pleasant topic for her – he knew that.  She'd been a mother once, and that wasn't real, didn't last.  "Did you conjure me up a husband?" she said.  "A handsome one, I hope."

"No," he said slowly, with his voice catching as if there were something more he wanted to say.  "I don't think so."

Let's stop this – she thought – before I find myself thinking of all the children I've never had, the chances I relinquished at that train station five years ago.  "Our shift's over," she said.  "You're free to go home and sleep."

"Already?" he said.  "I thought I went to sleep just ten minutes ago."

"No, you slept through half our shift," she said.

"Dammit."

"It's okay.  You're sick."

He looked up at her.  "People are just going to let me slack off now.  They're just waiting for me to drop off."

"No, they're going to try to make it better for you," she said.  "They're going to let you judge for yourself when working here gets too hard."

"Do you think I should give up now?" he said.  His tones were innocent, like a child: like she had only to say the word and he would obey.

She met his eyes through a blur.  "I'm never going to want you to give up, Mark."

Mark's face changed when he heard that.  With a visible effort not to wince in pain, he sat up laboriously and looked her intensely in the eye.  She recognized that expression, the mixture of plaintive nervousness and determination on his face.  It almost frightened her, wondering what he might say next.

Suddenly Mark caught a good look at her eyes, which she knew were gleaming.  His eyebrows drew together, and he reached out to touch her face, a thumb gently wiping away one tear.

She couldn't look away.  "Mark—"

"Dr. Lewis?"

Shit.  "Yeah?" she said, turning to see Lydia opening the door as Mark leaned backwards, away from her.  And she couldn't decide who to be angry with, Lydia for interrupting or herself for the wildly confused confession that had been on the verge of spilling from her mouth.  

"There's three coming in from an MVA.  Can you do it?"

"Of course," she said, standing decisively.  "Just my cup of tea."

Mark began, "I'll help—"

She interrupted him and said with a pointed grin, "Go _home."_

He smiled.  "Bye, Susan."

"Later," she said.

Looking back just before she closed the door behind her, she saw his smile fade into pensivity.

me = review whore :)  

r/r please!


	12. Like Crazy

Well, it seems that the crappier the show gets, the more I'm inspired.  (Go figure.)  So here's another chapter, four days ahead of schedule.  Be prepared for a little fluffiness.

Oh and thanks to Robeth, bansh, sparky015 1, saved-by-grace, Dr-Mara-Weaver for feedback.

**Chapter 12.****  Like Crazy**

All during the day, whenever she was alone at her desk doing papers, sometimes in public before she realized it, Elizabeth found herself rubbing the spot where her ring had been.  The skin was whiter there, softer.  She hadn't had it long enough to feel really strange without it, but she still felt both lighter and, somehow, lost.

She'd talked to Mark this morning; he'd come to the hotel, told her in broken words what he wanted to say.

"I love you and you love me," he'd said at one point, "but it's not enough.  We haven't been happy."

"No, we haven't.  You're right." 

He didn't know what to say after that, and Elizabeth was rather grouchily unhelpful.  She knew it was what she'd been wanting for months now, but she still, unreasonably, hated him.

"I'm so sorry," he said eventually as if he knew what she were thinking.

"Mark," she said edgily, trying to be rational, "I knew this was coming.  I knew before you did." 

They'd been sitting on the hotel bed.  Ella was in Mark's arms.  He looked down at the chubby, flushed face of their child and he seemed to feel better, less guilty.  

"What about Ella?" he said.

"You can have her," she answered.  "If you want to, you can have her.  Just – make sure she's safe."

"No, that's not what I meant.  What happens when she grows up and she hears this story?  It will sound sordid, or –"

Elizabeth didn't want him to feel guilty.  Mark wasn't the bad guy here, he was more of the injured party than he knew.  "She'll forgive you."

But suddenly she'd been lost in a rush of wanting him back – no, wanting _it_ back, the happy parts, the sweetness and the simplicity of what she'd thought they had.  The beginning of their relationship, when she'd first discovered it was possible to love someone who wouldn't hurt you; and the simultaneous moment she had decided, privately, that this one would last the rest of her life. 

She wanted to cry, although she didn't think she even deserved self-pity.  She wanted to grieve for that sense of forever.

When today's shift was – at last – over, Elizabeth hurried into the lounge to find a jumper she had misplaced, still absently twirling her fingertips around that empty spot on her left hand.  It was then, blinded by preoccupation with the missing jumper and with Mark, that she ran full tilt into a solid body that staggered and then straightened under the impact.

She recognized the feel of the hands on her elbows, supporting her and at the same time pushing away.  "Lizzie?"  Robert's voice was concerned.

"Sorry," she said, stepping into the darkened lounge and closing the door.

He moved his head to a better angle to catch her gaze.  "Are you upset, or did you just have the sudden urge to bowl me over?"

"I didn't see you.  I'm looking for my jumper."

"Jumper?  …Oh, right, sweater," he said.  "I'm rusty on my British slang.  The navy one, soft fabric?  Wool, or something?"

"Cashmere."

"Yeah, whatever."  He meandered over to the corner chair and leaned around the side, stretching slightly to pluck a heap of dark fabric from the floor.  "I noticed someone had dropped it here," he said, coming back to stand near Elizabeth and hold out first one sleeve, then the other for her to put it on.

She accepted the gesture, not sure what else to do, but when his hand lingered on her shoulder for too long, warming her skin through the layers of cashmere and cotton, it was her cue to face him and step backwards.

"Nice color on you," he said, voice as low and resonant as it had been when they first met in England, when he'd been trying, successfully, to charm her.  "Is it new?"

Elizabeth wasn't sure what it meant, that he'd noticed it was the first time she'd worn the jumper to work.  "Yes," she said, more curtly than she'd intended.

He nodded, noticing that tone and reacting to it more directly than he usually did.  "I'll see you tomorrow, Lizzie," he said, carefully distancing himself by appearing superior and amused for no reason whatsoever.

And cocky as hell.  As usual.

"Good night, Dr. Romano," she said as she turned to leave.

She'd gotten as far as the threshold, had just wrapped her hand around the doorknob with a hint of relief, when she heard the hissing intake of his breath and the two steps it took him to catch up to her.  Almost instantaneously, a hand closed gently on her left arm.

Elizabeth turned.  "What?"

"Your ring, Elizabeth," he said in a low voice.  "Where is it?"

"Oh – that –"

_Yes, that_, his look scorned her.  He let his hand slide down to hers and lift it.  "Do my eyes deceive me, or has it gone missing?"

And there was no way to hide from this now, and no point.  "I took it off," she said.  "Mark and I decided – we – it's over."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be, it wasn't your fault," she said, with an edge to her voice.

He reeled back slightly, and let go of her hand, allowing her to breathe again.  "It wasn't that kind of sorry," he said.  "Never mind."

Once he'd gone, with a nod and a murmured word of farewell, Elizabeth felt a wave of pure, dazed exhaustion.  She looked at the clock, asking herself out of habit what time she'd told Chris she'd be back.

But no, she'd forgotten for an instant.  Chris wasn't waiting for her; Ella had gone home with Mark.  There was nobody waiting at home: she was as free as the day she'd arrived in this country.  She had nothing left to anchor her and no reason, now, to feel responsible to anyone.

Elizabeth stumbled to the couch, drained, and fell into a wretched, bottomless sleep.  Hours later, stiff from sleeping on the lounge couch, she woke to the deep black stillness of the wee hours before dawn.  

There had been a gray, standardized hospital blanket over her, which fell to the floor when she stood in drowsy confusion and looked around to see that she was alone.  She had no memory of how the blanket had gotten there, but the warmth of the anonymous gesture made her think automatically and inescapably of Robert.

~

Mark left his patient with Kovac and meandered out to the desk, trying to appear casual.

"Randi, have you seen Susan?" he asked.

Randi shrugged.  "No."

"Is she on?"  
"I don't know."

"Just got off," Jerry said randomly from across the room.

"Thanks," Mark said.

He checked one last time around the ER, but Susan was nowhere to be found.  Well – he'd go home.  He could talk to her tomorrow.

But when he stepped outside, he saw her sitting on the bench, her face sober.  He hadn't realized, until his entire body went limp with relief at that sight, that he'd dreaded like hell not to see her tonight.

"Susan," he said, unable to restrain himself even before he got to her side.

She looked up at him and her smile was genuine and forced and sad and warm, all at once.

He sat on the bench and faced her.  "I need to talk to you."

"Go ahead," she said.

"Elizabeth and I talked, that night on the bridge."

"I know.  I'm glad you finally did."

She wasn't really glad, he could see that much, and that was all he needed to know before he did this.  "She told me she would come back, but that I had to decide whether I wanted her to."

Susan looked up.  "What did you tell her?" she breathed.

"Nothing.  I said I didn't know.  Then this morning I… we ended it."

"I'm sorry.  Was she okay?  --Are you?"

"She knew it was ending.  I miss her, but…  I don't know.  Everything's changing so fast."

He ran his hand over the top of his head, stuck.  This wasn't going in the right direction.  He hadn't planned the conversation out further than the mere decision to have it; just like before, all his energy had gone into anxiety and none into composing something eloquent enough for such a moment.

"I lied yesterday," he said abruptly.  "About the dream I had.  The son was mine."

Susan lifted her shoulders helplessly, questioning him with eyes that all at once had grown soft and unhappy.

Mark discarded the idea of eloquence and said impulsively, "I love you."  Overriding her small, sharp breath, he continued – "I know we'll never have that, that happy ending, and we won't grow old together or have a family or anything that I wanted us to have five years ago, but… I had to tell you."

She closed her eyes briefly, and he tried to explain himself, wondering as he did whether he was doing this wrong.  Perhaps it wasn't fair to drag her back here, to a confession and leavetaking in one, to a beginning that would overlap with its own ending.  They couldn't begin to hope for a lifetime together, they couldn't even try.

Yet he stumbled on, blinded by need and lost in a murky territory trodden once before, but never mapped out.  He knew nothing.  "I didn't think of it that way before now," he said.  "We'd moved on, and everything was different when you came back so I thought it was safe.  But then I fell all over again."

Susan opened her eyes and looked ahead of her, out at the darkened ambulance bay, where Chuny and Haleh were waiting on an arrival.  And she smiled, shaking her head to herself.

"Do you know," she said slowly, "before you came, I was sitting here, and thinking about you and how you'd probably gone home already with Elizabeth."

She turned herself to face him more directly, and her smile widened.  "And I was just wishing that everything were different and that you'd come out here and say something like that."

As Mark in his turn was absorbing this unbelievable piece of good luck, she leaned over and kissed him so quickly that anyone watching might have missed it altogether.

He lifted his hand to her face as she pulled away, still incredulous and dazed with the perfection of that moment.  "I missed you so much…" he murmured, brushing his thumb over her lips.

Susan simply put her arms around his neck.  "You're the best friend I've ever had," she said.  "And I love you."

He leaned his forehead against hers.  "Really?"

"Yeah," she said affectionately.  "Like crazy."


	13. Another Time, Another World

Aww, thanks for the outpouring of reviews.  Hope y'all are dealing okay with the grief.  …Oh, right, he's fictional.  I keep forgetting :)

Warning for a little bit of language, a lot of angst, possible medical inaccuracies (though I did my best!) … and Nekkid!Mark.  Ack.  (I'm really channeling the ER writers now eh?)  Don't worry though – nothing smutty!

Oh, and Christina: don't hate me for what I do in this chapter ;)

**Chapter 13.**  Another Time, Another World****

Susan couldn't decide how long she'd been waiting to wake up this way.

She had drifted into consciousness, aware first of the warmth and then of sunlight prickling against her eyelids, and then of the shape of Mark's waist in the circle of her arm.

Snuggling closer, her head underneath his armpit – in sleep she had made sure to keep her weight off his body, sensing that fragility was overtaking him – she considered the question further.

The last seven days had been a headily beautiful time – sweeter because it was stolen, because time's chariots were calling at their backs.  From the moment they kissed on the bench, Susan had known what the last days of Mark's life would look like, and how they would be shaped.

But she had imagined this on the train coming back to Chicago – hell, she'd imagined it on the train leaving Chicago, all those years ago.

It had been a long time coming, but last night after dinner, when she had driven Mark home and walked him like a gentleman to his doorstep, he had kissed her softly and asked her to stay.

Susan breathed out slowly.

"What is it?"

She looked up.  Mark was sleepily looking down at her.

"Nothing."  --_Just wondering how long it can stay this exquisite_.  She lifted herself to kiss his lips lightly and added cheerfully, "Good morning."

He took her face in his hands, bringing her into another, slower kiss.  "Morning."

A smile broke onto her face.

"What?"

She didn't know how to convey the wonder of it, and she shook her head helplessly and answered, "I found you."

Those words were so inadequate – but he seemed to understand what she meant.

Later, when they'd been dawdling without getting up for most of an hour, Mark said, "I guess we have to go to work sometime."

She grinned.  "I guess so."

Susan stretched lazily, and started looking for her clothes.  It was only after a few seconds – when she'd halfway dressed, and was looking for last night's blouse – that she noticed he was having trouble standing up straight.

"Mark?" she said, approaching his side of the bed.

Impatiently he waved her off.

"Mark, are you –"

He was gritting his teeth.  "This happens when I get up.  It's the Gamma treatment, makes me feel sick."

She reached instinctively to hold his arm, to help him – or just to let him know she was there.  And he wrenched away.

"_Don't_.  I'm all right."  This wasn't his usual stoic protest; his voice was almost a hiss of anger.

Susan closed her eyes and turned around, looking through blurry eyes for her shirt.  Only after a few minutes of aching silence, both of them tiptoeing around, did she feel him come up behind her and put one hand on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry."

She shook her head and turned towards him, murmuring, "Don't be," into his shoulder.  Even through his cotton shirt, his skin was hot, feverish, against her forehead.

"I'm sorry," he repeated, his lips close to her hair.  "I don't want you to be – no – I can't have you do this, take care of me like an invalid.  Not anymore."

Swallowing something, she looked up at him and said soberly, "I love you.  It's not pity and it's not grief and it started long before any of this came around.  You do know that, right?"

He nodded.  "It seems like more than anyone can hope for – but I know."

Susan stood on tiptoe to kiss him.  "I told you I'd never forget."

~

When the door was flung open, _sans _knock, Elizabeth was reading the newspaper.

"Lizzie, what's this I hear about you creating conflict in the ER?" Romano said, his voice impatient, as if this was an inconsequential harrassment in between all the more important things he had to do.

"Dr. Kovac thinks he knows more about surgery than I do; I just let him know that's not true," Elizabeth said coolly.  They'd clashed again over a frail older man; Luka had chased Elizabeth clear up to the surgical floor telling her the man wanted a chance to survive the angioplasty Elizabeth knew would kill him.

"You called him incompetent?"

"He provoked me.  Anyway, you've said the same thing plenty of times yourself."

Robert opened his mouth, then closed it with an amused look.  "Quite true, but consider your wrists slapped, et cetera et cetera, and quit making people mad.  I'm really not interested in arbitrating between you and those monkeys downstairs.  Okay?"

"I'll do my best," she said with a light smile.  "But I can't promise anything."

As Elizabeth returned to looking over the newspaper, she circled a listing with her highlighter.  Romano cocked his head and stepped closer.

"What's this?  You looking for a new job?"

"New place," she corrected, putting down her marker.  "At this point there's no reason for me to stay in a hotel."

He took a deep breath and sat down in the chair against the wall, clasping his hands over his knees.  Like a friend, she thought; like he could tell that before he came in, she'd been almost frustrated and grouchy enough to throw the newspaper against the wall.  "Find anything yet?"

"Not yet.  It's only been a week since we decided."  Elizabeth paused and added, "It feels like longer."

Another deep exhalation.  He seemed to be waiting, listening.

She wanted to tell him everything; how Ella had been a burden while she had her but at the same time had been her only bulwark against being alone.  How empty a hotel room was and how it had felt to see Mark and Susan come in together this morning.  

But this was Robert, so in the end she only said, "I thought I had put down roots here.  And now even Ella's gone."

"Alone again, naturally," quoth he.

"I'm thinking of going back to England," she confessed suddenly.  "Of raising Ella there, after… well… later on."

He frowned slightly.  "Really?"

"Why not?" she said.  There were so many reasons.  She had a home in England: a family.  Here, she'd realized, she had nothing but memories and no future outside of her career.

Robert laughed in her face, as if it were obvious.  "Elizabeth, when I last saw you in England you were miserable.  That's why.  It's not that I disapprove of the concept of an 'old boys' club', but I recall quite clearly that _you_ didn't enjoy it."

"And it's so much better in America," she guessed skeptically.

"Don't think for a minute that you don't get the respect you deserve here," he said: "you heard Anspaugh.  And you're most likely going to be in charge of this department in a few weeks.  At your father's hospital you had to prove yourself, over and over; I saw it myself."

"So you think I should stay," she deduced.

He nodded.  "I know you; you wouldn't be happy banging your head against a glass ceiling, no matter how many British picket fences and rosy-cheeked British babies come your way."

"Career first," she translated.

He shrugged.  "It's not a bad thing to love what you do."

"No – it's not," she agreed.  

And she'd never thought of it that way; but she realized, now, that she had never felt at home in any country, save in an operating room, and never felt completely satisfied unless she was holding another person's life in her hands and fighting for that life with all she had.

She and Robert were similar in that respect, perhaps.

Elizabeth examined his face, wondering how he'd come to know her so well.  They spent so much time antagonizing each other and expended so much effort on appearing invulnerable – but a wordless understanding had sprung up between them, and she only now noticed it.

"How would you feel about dinner tonight?" he said, interrupting her scrutiny.  "You offered me an ear before; maybe I can return the favor."  He paused and then, quietly, added, "I'd hate to see you spend your birthday alone."

She'd almost forgotten it was today.

He lifted his hands innocently.  "I like that look you're giving me.  You'd think I'd never offered a simple friendly gesture before."

Elizabeth lifted her eyebrows disbelievingly, swallowing her shock at his kindness in favor of their usual mode of interaction.  "Have you?"

"Try me."

Elizabeth knew she seemed surprised, but she hadn't expected anything like this.  Not now at least, not so soon.

Well – she reflected – for once she knew all his cards were on the table.  This wasn't a simple gesture at all; he'd given himself away not with his words but with a look, with the soft note in his voice.  He wanted to comfort her, sure, but this was partly about him, about what he wanted from her.

Of course.

At first she wondered if it were too soon to strike up a friendship with someone who not long ago had kissed her in a way that she felt to the tips of her fingers.  Then she heard herself saying, "All right.  But you know I never pine, right?"

She didn't want to celebrate alone either.  As for what lay behind his offer, and behind everything he said to her nowadays – she could keep ahold of herself.

The effort Robert made to dim the glow in his eyes was visible as he stood up and headed for the door; and she knew her instincts had been right.

"I know," he said before he left.  "Believe me, I know."

~

"Mark!"

He looked up with a start.

Kerry was holding a chart out at him and calling his name from the threshold with just a hint of annoyance.  She'd probably been calling his name for awhile – considering her face.

"Yeah.  Sorry," he said, taking the chart and abandoning the coffee that he'd been brewing in the lounge pot.

"Curtain One," she said sharply.  "Stomach pain."

"Got it."

He was heading off when Kerry followed him out of the lounge and called, "Mark?"

"What?" he said, wary.

"Did you get enough sleep?  You seem tired."

Her voice was pointed, but Mark wanted to laugh.  "Hardly slept a wink," he said, throwing a smile over to the computer at the admit desk, where Susan had been listening.

His patient turned out to have lower right quadrant pain, so Mark called for a surgical consult, hoping it wasn't Elizabeth.  This morning he'd run into her while he was coming in with Susan, and her expression had been such a tumult of gladness and friendliness and regret that he wasn't sure whether it was funny or poignant.

But, with just his luck, it was worse: Robert Romano, who sauntered in looking more pleased with himself than usual – which Mark had assumed wasn't possible.  In fact, he was almost smiling.

Of course, the contentment disappeared when he saw Mark.  "Oh, it's you," he said.  "All right.  What is this, rule-out appy on a guy with gas?"

"This isn't gas," Mark said wearily.  "Lower right quadrant pain."

Romano rolled his eyes in doubt and asked for the chart, which had mysteriously disappeared from Mark's hands.  While Mark tried to remember where he'd put it, he heard a splash and a squawk.

"Dammit," Romano said.  "He must've perfed already."

Mark, who had retrieved the chart from the nearby counter, turned to see both his patient and, satisfyingly, the surgeon covered in dark vomit.

"We need a central line," Romano prompted him.  "Get a tube."

It was in his haste to help with the procedure, and perhaps sleepiness because he hadn't finished his coffee, that Mark noticed his hands starting to shake.  By the time he had retrieved the tube, the shaking was uncontrollable, and the equipment slipped to the floor.

He felt himself shoved aside and stood helplessly while Romano called for assistance.  Later, when the patient had been stabilized and sent to the OR, Romano lingered behind and said, "Dr. Greene, I need to speak to you."

Mark didn't feel like talking to the guy right now.  He ignored the summons and strode out into the hall.

"Dr. Greene!" Romano repeated, following him outside.  People were beginning to melt into the woodwork, sensing a confrontation.

"What is it, Robert?" Mark said.

"You know damn well what it is," he said.  "Look, I didn't want to do this in public, but since you've insisted on fucking up in public then that's where we'll talk."

"What are you talking about?"

"You dropped that tube," he said.

"Yeah, I was in a hurry."

"No, you've got an inoperable brain tumor," Romano corrected him.

Beside him, Mark heard Carter's breath catch like a little boy's in his throat.  He'd been pretending to look at some films on the display nearby.

"What's your point?" Mark asked finally, feeling like a sullen ten-year-old in the principal's office: talking back just for the sake of it.

"You cannot work here anymore," Romano said deliberately.  "If I hear about you working any shifts past this one, I will fire you.  If I recall correctly, you've already caused this hospital enough lawsuits for several lifetimes."

Low blow.  Mark was fuming, but impotent: this was the Chief of Staff, after all.

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't add _deliberate malpractice to your list of mistakes by taking patients' lives in your hands when you're in danger of having a seizure or losing motor control at any second."_

"All _right_!" he finally broke in furiously.  "I'm dying.  You might as well add that in."

Romano rubbed his chin for a second, his eyes probing Mark's reflectively.  Then he turned slightly away.  "It's time to face up to it," he said, his voice low.  "If you'll excuse me, I have an appendix to remove."

Soft footsteps came up behind Mark as Romano swept off to the elevators.  Susan was touching his face, turning him towards her.

"Susan…"

"It's okay."  She was murmuring, almost whispering.  "It's okay."

Blindly he reached his arms around her, aware as he did so that everyone had really melted away this time, that there were no rude or probing eyes upon them now.  He sought her lips and kissed her desperately, wondering how he was supposed to give up.

~

After looking in her office and the lounge, and inquiring with as much subtlety as he could muster at the front desk, Romano found Elizabeth on the roof.  She was standing at the railing in her white lab coat, facing outwards with a few curls fluttering loosely in a slight breeze.

Romano called lightly before he could see her face, "What, no slinky black dress?"

Elizabeth turned and her face was covered in scathing wrath. 

"What the hell are you thinking?" she spat.

He knew what must have happened then, but chose to play dumb.

"That if I'd known the roof was one of your usual haunts, I'd come up here a lot more often."

"You told Mark he was too far gone to keep working?" she said, her voice breaking at first and then hardening.  "Do you have any idea how hard this is for him?"

"Of course I don't," he said, abandoning the jokes once and for all.  "I've never had a brain tumor.  But it's not about him."

"Oh, it's not?  It's not about punishing him for being better than you are, for trying to keep going, for—"

 "This wasn't about you, it wasn't about satisfying a personal vendetta, it wasn't anything but the fact that he _can't _take care of people any more."  He wasn't accustomed to justifying his motives to his underlings, but it seemed imperative that Elizabeth understand.  She couldn't think that he was being malicious.  Not this time.  

"Do you understand?" he continued, aware of the intensity his defense had taken on.  "He's finished and he knows it.  There are times when he doesn't remember all the things he needs to know, and he refuses to accept it."

"Give him time and he will!"

"And I'm the guy who has to deal with the lawsuits in the meantime," he said.

"Right, right.  It's not about him, it's about the liability."

"It's about the guy who comes in with anaphylactic shock and dies because his doctor can't remember how to get a tube down his throat," Romano contradicted her, trying to keep control of his temper.  God, what was wrong with her –

But of course.  We must protect Mark, he thought.

"Your compassion continues to astonish me," she said.

"Elizabeth, we're doctors," he said wearily.  "This is a place where we heal other people, it's not where we go to work out our own personal little neuroses." 

Elizabeth shook her head, discarding the debate as fruitless.  "You've been the biggest problem, the biggest threat, in my life since I got to America," she said, talking both to herself and to him.  "I don't know why I thought that could change."

He knew, sinkingly, what that meant, and he felt his heart break a little as he clamped his hands onto the railing and rested there.  "So that's why you're not running off home to primp."

She looked over at him with a little, regretful shrug.  The small movement had a sense of finality about it.

He closed his eyes for a second.  "Got it."

And that was it.  He told himself, walking downstairs, slamming every door he went through after he knew he was out of her earshot, that he'd never ask her for her heart again.  That everything was all wrong between them, too twisted by years of maneuvering and manipulation and enmity for them to trust each other.  She didn't even believe that he was capable of doing the right thing – that phrase, _better than you are, kept ringing in his ears with the harsh acuity of plain truth._

He should have stuck with someone like Nikki, someone who liked his artificial charm and loved his money and would have married him for the sake of both.  He'd've had regular sex and a pretty woman to spend his time with, and it wouldn't matter if they both kept others on the side, or if he paused sometimes in his work just to watch through the window as Elizabeth walked by.

"Robert, slow _down_," he heard Anspaugh say sharply after he shoved by the old man, unacknowledging.

"Pardon me, Donald," he tossed back, bitterly sarcastic.

A few more steps, a few more seconds, and he was in his office, a sanctuary and a hellhole.  The ones at Northwestern were better.  Open, airy, impressive.  He would start over.

It must be better than this.

The present he'd bought earlier today, after his conversation with Elizabeth, was sitting on his desk.  It wasn't fancy, wasn't expensive, didn't give anything away: just a paperback book, a volume of Neruda.  He'd been tempted to buy the better stuff, the love poetry – but hadn't quite dared, knowing full well what her reaction would be to that.  Instead it was_ Odes to Common Things, a topic that would not veer out of their boundaries._

The book went in his desk drawer.  It was useless to everyone now; Romano had a copy at home himself.  The inscription would go unread.  "Best wishes," he'd written, and signed it "R."

He pulled his curtains open, hating the confinement, and opened the windows and threw his head back and simply breathed in the starlit night.  Elizabeth, he thought, must still be up on the roof, breathing higher, sweeter air.

Romano closed his eyes and pictured her – the strong, sharp line of nose and chin, the high forehead, the burnished sheen of her hair, and the eyes – he'd never forget that mutable, limpid blue.  Almost gray sometimes, when she cried; greener when she was ladling out the sarcasm, and silvery in the moonlight.

He knew her face and all her expressions, for they had become the landscape of his imagination.

With an impatient motion he closed the window and sat down at his desk, turning off the lamp.  

Insert creative "r/r" request here :)


	14. Rage, Rage

A/N: Title stolen from one of those poems they made us all read in sixth grade.  (I know, like people don't quote that one oftenenough already.)

Thanks for all the feedback so far!  It's nice to know you all are still tolerating me jerking these poor characters around on their strings… and reviews are much better inspiration than the show itself these days :/****

**Chapter 14.****  Rage, Rage**

"Say it again, Ella.  Come on, say it again."

Mark was cooing at Ella, unabashed, as he and Susan sat on a blanket in Avalon Park, their breakfasts spread festively before them and the sun rising slowly above them.  

Ella shrieked with laughter at his fingers tickling her chin.  "Da-da," she murmured finally, once Mark stopped.

Ruffling Ella's hair, Susan said, "She's beautiful."

"And really smart," Mark said, ridiculous in his paternal pride.

She laughed at him, and kissed him sweetly.  "And really smart."

He'd woken up this morning in an uncommonly warm morning to her soft kiss on his cheek, her fingers trailing lightly up his chest; she'd held up an actual picnic basket and dressed Ella up in a sundress for a walk in the park, trying, he knew, to cajole him into forgetting that this was his first day since quitting work.

It had worked.

He chomped on an apple, leaning back against a wide tree and out of the sun, as Susan bent over Ella to slice up a banana on her plate.  Watching their two blonde heads so close together, he found himself smiling sleepily.

"She eats by herself now, right?"

"Just give her the fork and she's good to go."  Feeling sick just from a few bites of the apple, he surreptitiously tossed the apple several yards away, into the grass.

"How old is she, again?" Susan said.

"It's her first birthday in three weeks or so – on the 26th.  Seems like we've had her forever, though."

Susan gave Ella the fork and cooed at her, just like Mark had a minute ago.  "We couldn't live without you baby, now could we?" 

After lightly kissing Ella's chubby little shoulder, she looked up and saw Mark's helpless smile.  "What?"

He reached out to touch her face, and murmured, "God – you're beautiful."

Her eyes darkened for an instant, and he wondered, because she had never spoken of it, what had hurt her back in Arizona to make her face so sad.  But she crooked a smile and kissed his hand, then left Ella's side to settle in between his legs, her back resting against his chest and her head gently fitting into the curve of his neck and shoulder.

It hurt to be touched, and to touch, but he could imagine nothing more healing than this.

He wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her hair, then the tip of her ear.  "Thanks for this, Susan.  How'd you get today off?"

"I traded with Weaver.  She understood."  After a pause, she said lightly, "After all, how can you have a morning like this and not go on a picnic?  It's rank heresy."

"I'm glad our boss supports the rights of compulsive picnickers like you."

"Well, she's a very supportive person."  Susan snuggled closer, and he held her tighter.  "You know – she wished you had talked to her longer before leaving yesterday."

"I couldn't handle talking to her after what happened with Romano.  But we've never been friends anyway."

"And Carter?" she said.  "What about him?"

He didn't want to think about that.  "Ah, we both have a sparkling history with Carter, don't we?"

"Please," she groaned.  She broke off to say to Ella, "You like that banana, babe?"

Ella waved her fork in the air.  "Da-da."

"She's got quite the vocabulary," Susan giggled.  "How about this?  Who's your favorite old guy in the whole world?"

"Just watch her say it's Mr. Rogers," Mark said.  "It'd be my luck."

"Da-da," Ella repeated, then stuck the last slice of banana into her mouth.

"Nope, she knows who brings home the bacon," Susan said.  "I'm training her in the fine art of gold-digging."

"I'm glad to see you're such a good influence on her."

Ella, oblivious to them, had lost interest in her banana and started watching in fascination as a caterpillar crawled onto her plate.  "Da-da," she said to it.

They shared a laugh, and Mark finally broached the topic that had kept him awake last night while she slept next to him.  "I've been thinking," he said.

"Yeah?"  She twisted her head, looking up at him.  "About what?"

"Giving up."

Susan pursed her mouth.  "What do you mean?"

"The medicine.  It makes me feel sick, it hurts – it's hard to enjoy life sometimes, with the Gamma treatment."

She breathed deeply, her ribcage rising and falling against his arms.  "I know."

"I thought about giving up, about going out peacefully."

He paused, and Susan said, her voice thick, "You want to stop treatment?"

"I was going to.  I thought I should…"  He tried to move his neck to meet her eyes, and she, sensing his movement, slowly disentangled herself and twisted her body to kneel in front of him.  "But I can't do that, I can't just go out peacefully anymore, because we've lost so much time already."

The look in her eyes reminded him he couldn't fix everything; that nothing would change the end result.  He smoothed her hair back and took her face in his hands, trying to explain himself more clearly.  "I can have ten months, if I fight for them.  And I want all the time with you that I can have."

She kissed him lingeringly.  "You can have forever."

~

"I'll close," Elizabeth said, when she and Robert had finished patching up a GSW.

They had gone hours in near-complete silence; they'd worked together long enough and often enough to need few words, and conversation was impossible.  Elizabeth had thought about him all last night, and rumination only made everything murkier and the answers further from her grasp.

Robert answered her offer with a slight emphasis, "I'll help."

He had been uncommonly polite today, Elizabeth reflected.  And when he did speak, his expression was searching, almost beseeching.  He was unapologetic and yet subtly kind.

It hadn't been twenty-four hours since she sent him away from the moonlit rooftop.  She wasn't ready to be kind back.

They closed together, their work as easy and compatible as always, but their silence fraught.  Then Elizabeth escaped to lunch.

Lunch, because she hadn't the time or energy to venture outside, ended up being a cheese sandwich from a vending machine, eaten in the lounge over a new issue of the _BMJ_.

When Robert came in, he looked quite pleased with himself.  She almost smiled at his expression, instinctively; and then caught herself and continued reading, finishing off the last bite of her sandwich.

"Don't tell me that's your lunch?"

She gave him a look.  What else would it be?

"Not a very cheerful way to spend such a pretty day, sitting inside here."

"I never knew you had such a deep appreciation for the beauty of nature," she said.  "It's refreshing to see you like _something._"

"I adore_ you_," he answered with silky mockery.  "How's that for refreshing?"

When she didn't answer, he sighed and turned to the coffee pot on the counter, and started rambling in his usual way without paying attention to her mood.  "Well, it'll rain soon anyway, so you'd've been caught in the weather."  He paused suddenly, having had a taste of the coffee.  "This crap gets worse every time I drink it.  You'd think those interns'd have a learning curve when it comes to coffee, but at this point I'd rather drink caffeinateddishwater, and it's time to admit that none of these people will ever make good coffee, or make good doctors for that matter.  Do you want any coffee by the way?"

A bemused Elizabeth shook her head.

"How about tea?"

"Tea?"

"I think I noticed some lying around."  He opened the cabinet and, reaching confidently in to the second shelf, produced an unopened package of tea.

Elizabeth allowed a slow, skeptical smile to spread on her face.  "How convenient."

He sighed, caught.  "I was grocery shopping this morning.  It was an impulse."

"Buying your way into my good graces now, are you?"

He grew gruff, embarrassed, all of a sudden.  She found it endearing and then wondered when she'd gone so soft.  "Just shut up and have some tea, will you?"

She was still smiling when he handed her a cup full of hot water and a tea bag.  "Thank you."

His face rippled from crotchety to pleased to rueful.  He sat across from her, sober-faced, easing his coffee mug down onto the table in front of him.  "I know this won't seem to you like much of, well, anything, or uh, or an apology, but that's because I don't think I was wrong yesterday."

She dragged the tea bag in circles, watching a warm honeyed color seep into the water.

"That said – I want you to believe I didn't mean any of it to ruin your birthday, or – or – uh – or to hurt you."  He added the last phrase in a low voice, hurriedly.

Elizabeth looked up from her tea.  "I know."  If there was a constant in everything that had happened between them the last few months, it was that.  But that wasn't the problem.

He seemed dissatisfied with this imperfect reconciliation but knew it was the best they could do, and broke eye contact as if to signal the conversation was over.  "Well!  I had a lovely little meeting today with a certain selection committee.  –We talked about you."

Elizabeth had been about to take a sip of her tea.  She put it down.

"Got your attention now," he noted wickedly.

"Well?" she said.  She'd had an interview with the committee just a few days ago, but had almost forgotten about it.

"We-ell…"  He drew out the syllable, enjoying her suspense.  "Weaver's nailed Chief of Staff."

"She's not!" Elizabeth grumbled.

"Sorry.  She kisses a good ass when she wants to."

"And?"

"And you'll be the new head of surgery," he finally told her.  "Surprise, surprise, I still have some pull around here.  Not that I needed it."

Elizabeth smiled widely, and noticed that her pride was reflected in the depths of his eyes as he gave her a brief, subtle nod.  "Thank you anyway, I suppose."

She took a sip of the tea.  It tasted like cinnamon and peppermint, warm and sharp in her throat.

His voice dropped an octave.  "Maybe when you have to run a department you'll understand what I told Mark yesterday."

"I understand it fine," she fired back, her smile gone.  "_My understanding isn't exactly what's at issue, it's yours."_

Robert stood from the table, his face hardening.  "Yes, you've established very well how you feel about me.  And, now that I've brought you your good news, I think I'll have lunch somewhere else."

With a savage flick of his wrist he tossed the remainder of his coffee into the sink, and left the cup for someone else to clean.

"Robert," she said.

He ignored her, striding to the door.

She stood.  "_Robert_!"

When he turned halfway around, she could see his profile, and watch his jaw tighten.  "What is it, Lizzie?" he said.

Elizabeth didn't know why she'd called him back, except that he was terribly mistaken about some things and she wasn't even sure what those were.  Knowing that she was taking the cowardly way out, she said only, "Do I get your old office?"

He blinked slowly, looking half amused and half unhappy, his eyes still focused on the ground ahead of him.  "Yeah," he said.  "Yeah, whatever you want."

"How about the gold stethoscope?" she teased.

"Oh, I'll be keeping that one to impress the ladies at Northwestern."

"Good luck with _that."_

As Robert's expression gave way to amusement he turned hastily to push the door open.  A step outside the door, and he turned over his shoulder for what she expected to be a parting shot.

"Congratulations," he merely said, then added with a twinkle in his eye, "Chief."


	15. Isabelle

Thanks for all the reviews last chapter!

In response to what someone wrote, I forget who: don't get too upset about Romano – I want to do this right, so it takes longer, but they'll get there.  The story itself has only a few more chapters.  (At least I hope so.  I feel like Grady Tripp: the end keeps receding the more I write.)  

**Chapter 15. Isabelle**

"Dr. Corday?" the desk clerk called as Elizabeth came out of surgery with Romano.  "Your mother called.  _Three times_."

His expression confirmed that Isabel had been her usual self on the phone.  Elizabeth sighed and said, "I'll call her from my office."

"Tell your mom I said hello," Romano smirked as he peeled off towards his office.

"She'll be happy to hear that," Elizabeth said sarcastically.

The desk clerk added, "She said to call her at your house."

Elizabeth knew what that meant.  "Bollocks."

The voice that answered was Mark's, although covered in a thin layer of uncharacteristic irritation.  "Yeah?"

"Mark, it's me.  Is my mother--?"

"Oh yes, she is," he enunciated with a sigh.  "She decided to surprise us for Ella's birthday this week."

Elizabeth winced.  "I haven't told her about all of this – us – yet."

"I figured that."

"I'm so sorry."

"Me too," he complained.

"I'll be right there.  I'm off now, so—"

"Please, just get here," he said.  "She's a little confused about why Susan was at our house."

"Susan's there?"

"She left.  Quickly.  And now it's just me and Rachel and Ella and your mother."

"Okay, okay, I'm coming!" she said, and registered a brief hint of amusement at his plight before dashing out to catch a train home.

Isabelle was waiting in the family room, drinking tea with Mark, when Elizabeth came in.  The door had been open.  "Hello?" she said cautiously, and followed her mother's voice to the family room.

"Elizabeth," Isabelle said, raising her eyebrows.

"Mom."

Mark stood with clear relief on his face.  "Hey, Elizabeth," he said.

Passing her on his way to the staircase, he kissed her cheek.  "Good luck," he whispered amusedly.

"Shut up," she answered just as quietly.

When he'd gone she sat on the couch.

Isabelle leaned back, looking ready to hear what she must already have figured out.  "I thought I'd book a hotel room for a few days and surprise you and Mark for Ella's birthday," she said pointedly.

"Yeah… I heard," Elizabeth said absently.

"Looks like you were really surprised," she noted.

"Well…"

"What's going on?"

Elizabeth sighed.

"You're not living here anymore."  Her voice was flat and accusatory at the same time.

"No, I'm not.  I moved – well – I've been staying in a hotel.  I just moved into a new flat."

Isabelle shook her head.  "I shouldn't be surprised, but I am.  But, I'll wager my life it's not his fault."

"It's not about faults, Mom," she said, a conclusion she'd reached intellectually long ago but still felt in the pit of her stomach as a lie.  (It _must be someone's fault.)  "You of all people should know the blame is sometimes equally shared."_

"I hope you're not referring to my marriage with your father, because in _that _case I think he was completely-"

"Oh, never _mind_," Elizabeth said rather bad-temperedly.

Isabelle nodded, then shook her head, and then blew out a breath, as if she couldn't decide what to say.  "Well!  I'm sorry this didn't work out."

"Me too, in a way."  She paused.  "But it's where we've been headed all along."

"_I_ never saw it that way."  Isabelle spoke as if she were the last authority and Elizabeth must have made a mistake.  "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I knew you'd assume it was my fault.  And I was right."

"Your father knows?"

Silence, she knew, was admission.  Her mother grew coolly angry, jealous that Elizabeth still trusted her father more.  "He has a new girl already," she said, as if to return the insult.  "A blonde."

Elizabeth laughed outright, startling her mother.  "You mean Susan Lewis.  I know.  I all but gave them my blessing."

"That was awfully nice of you."

"He's dying."

"For real this time?"

"Yes, for real_ this time.  For heavens' sake."_

Isabelle clucked her tongue, looking sad, and didn't speak for a long time.   
  


~

Well, there was one thing that would never change, Mark thought as he entered Doc Magoo's, looking for Susan – the smell of this place, dirty, greasy, comforting.

Susan turned from a corner table and her smile was bright despite having worked all night and having another shift to work today.  She'd called this morning: "Hey, I missed you last night…"  They'd arranged to get breakfast here.

Mark slid in across from her and said, "You could've come over last night."

"I wasn't sure who would be there," she said.  "Where is Elizabeth's mom staying?"

"She booked a hotel already," Mark said.  "Elizabeth's dealing with her."

"Lucky her," Susan grinned.

They each ordered pancakes, and Susan asked for a latte.  "With an extra shot," she added.

"Starting early, aren't you?"

"I could drink you under the table any day."

"Make that two lattes," Mark told the waiter.

"I heard them talking," he added when the waiter had gone.  "She's got it in her head that everything is Elizabeth's fault.  I don't know what it is about women and their mothers –"

"Oh, Mark," Susan said.  "That's ridiculous.  Fathers and sons are the same way."

"You got me there."

"Men," she grumbled, but she was smiling.  Then her eyes lit up as she looked first at a reflection in the window, and then twisted in her seat to look surreptitiously behind her.  "Well well well, look who's getting breakfast together," she murmured, motioning to the doorway.

He looked past her shoulder.  Just arriving were Luka Kovac and Abby Lockhart.  When the latter noticed Mark her mouth fell open for a second, and then she pulled herself together and waved tentatively.

Mark motioned for them to sit down, and after sharing a questioning look Luka and Abby headed towards them, Luka with his head ducked in a slightly embarrassed manner.

"Hey guys," Susan said, moving over so Abby could sit next to her.  Luka settled in next to Mark.

They all greeted each other tentatively, and Susan said, her eyes dancing with her typical friendly curiosity, "So what have you guys been up to?"

"I was helping her move back into her apartment," Luka said somewhat gruffly.

Abby drew circles on the tabletop with her fingers, avoiding Susan's raised eyebrows.  At first Mark wasn't sure what she was so uncomfortable for, until he remembered that whole drama between Carter and Luka that Susan had told him about.  For some reason Susan found the entire thing entertaining, like a soap opera for her own viewing pleasure.

Clearly, Abby felt somewhat less humorous about it.  "Have you guys ordered already?" she said dourly.

"Yeah."  Susan motioned to their waiter.  "I actually need to go check my messages – I'll be right back."  She edged out past Abby, and went outside to use her cell phone.

Left alone after Abby and Luka had ordered, Mark tried to make normal conversation.  "So that guy is gone from your apartment building?"

Abby laughed sharply.  "Let's hope so."

Wrong topic.  Mark felt rather gauche and looked to Luka, who was, as usual, broodingly silent.  Finally Abby said, "How's everything, Mark?  You haven't kept in touch."

"I know," he said.  "I'm working things out right now."

"Hanging out at Doc's, huh?"

"Susan had a breakfast break.  Believe me, I don't normally come here of my own free will.  It's a bit nostalgic now, though."

"Nostalgic?"

"I actually miss working here, if you can believe it."

Abby tried to laugh.  "I can't."

"Me either," Luka added suddenly, with a charming smile.  Mark didn't know the guy very well, but he seemed decent.  

The door opened and Susan rushed back in, her face blanched.  "Mark," she said in an urgent whisper, "I need you for a sec."  To Luka and Abby, "Sorry."

Her hand frantically grasped his arm as they moved away from the table.  Susan was almost in tears.  "I had a message from Suzie," she whispered hurriedly, "she says she needs help and I don't know where she is and they're in a hotel somewhere but –"

"Suzie, little Suzie?"

"Yeah, she's with Chloe…"  Susan pressed her hand to her temple.  "Oh my God.  Oh my God Mark, she could be _anywhere_, my sister could've _left _her somewhere –"  She broke off.  "I have to go to the police."

"Want me to come?"

Susan shook her head, but then said softly, "Yeah."

They went to the police station together, and Mark waited while Susan was ignored by a dozen people, and while she decided to book a flight to New York.

"I'll come with you," he said.

"No, no," she said.  "Your daughter's birthday is tomorrow."

"I'll fly out there after that," he promised her.  "If you're still in New York, I'll be there day after tomorrow."

Without agreeing to that, Susan bit her lip and leaned her forehead against his chest for a second, and he stroked her hair.  "If I don't find her within twelve hours, the chances drop, like, exponentially."

He hugged her slowly.  "You'll find her."

When he dropped her off at the airport she finally gave in and asked him: "I'll see you then?"

"Yeah.  You'll see me soon."  He kissed her gently.

He made the promise knowing it was no longer in his power whether or not he'd be able to keep it.

~

The sound Elizabeth made when she entered the surgical lounge, interrupting Romano as he chatted with some fresh-faced med student over vending-machine sandwiches, closely resembled a snarl.

Romano regarded her with amusement and told the kid sitting next to him, "Don't feed the British bears – they bite."

She bit her lip, embarrassed.  "I'm Dr. Corday.  You are?"

"Uh – um – Victor.  Victor Brennan.  Nice to meet you."  He was stuttering.

"You can go, Vic.  Can I call you Vic?  Good," Romano said, quite composed.

The student stumbled away, and Elizabeth sat down next to Romano.  "Have you been scaring the new student?"

"No, no, I would never do that.  He's a promising kid, actually.  Just can't get a sentence out without an "um."  I think I'll let you be in charge of him."

"How nice of you."

"So, what's with the growling?  You're the one who made him scared."

"My _mother_," Elizabeth complained.  "I took her to lunch.  She wanted to see my place."

"The new apartment!  You're definitely staying in America then?"

"County is addictive," she said.  

"If you're a glutton for punishment," he said pensively.  "So you've moved in and everything?"

"Yes," she said.  "It's not bad.  At least, _I _don't think so."

"What does she think?"

"Oh, it's too small for my salary, the neighborhood is too messy for the rent I'm paying, no American flat can really measure up to any British one…  Basically I should have stayed at that '_lovely' _house I had with Mark, I never appreciate what I already have, whatever that means, and I shouldn't have driven him away, because _of course it's my fault."_

Robert's brow furrowed.  He pursed his mouth, considered this rant for a few seconds, and said, "I'm guessing you're looking for a target of rage, so I won't comment and open myself to any risk."

"You're such an ass," she said.

"I know.  Here," and he shoved the uneaten half of his sandwich towards her, pulling an innocent face.  "Have a plastic-wrapped tasteless egg sandwich."

Elizabeth gave him a look, half-smiling.  "I don't want an egg sandwich.  I already had lunch with my mother.  (Although of course _she didn't think it was a proper meal.  'American meals never are')."_

A pause.  He hid his mouth with one hand.

"You're laughing at me," she said.

"Well, sympathy's not really my forte."

"Oh, it isn't?" she said sarcastically.

"You know, people are like cheese.  They get sharper as they get older."

"People. are. like… _cheese?"_

"Well, whatever," he said, brushing off his odd metaphor.  "You know what I mean, they get more interesting.  Your mother's really not that bad.  I always thought she was a kind of fun old lady.  Believe me, it could be worse."

Elizabeth fell silent.

"Speaking of which –"  He stood up.  "I had an afternoon date at a nursing home."

"Send her my best wishes," Elizabeth said.

"Yeah," he said, his face expressing all the sarcastic answers he managed to resist making.  _Not like she can hear them._


	16. Heredity

**Chapter 16.****  Heredity**

"Look, it's hopeless," Mark said when he hung up the phone.  "She's not going to make it back here.  Let's meet her there, we can have a mini-party in the surgeon's lounge."

Ella and Isabelle stared up at him from the family room couch, where they'd been waiting for Elizabeth all day as she tried to extricate herself from a pile-up of trauma.  Isabelle was on her sixth time reading _Officer Buckle and Gloria to Ella, who was wearing a party hat.  Elizabeth had finally called and told Mark she couldn't make it, because she had another procedure scheduled in half an hour._

"A hospital can't be the proper place for a little girl's party," Isabelle objected, putting down the book.

"Elizabeth does whatever she wants over there.  She's going to be chief of the department in a few weeks."

Mark didn't realize what he was doing until the incriminating words fell onto the air.

"She didn't tell _me that," Isabelle said, drawing herself up like an offended queen._

"I'm sure she was getting around to it," he placated her.  "Um… I'll go get the extra diapers, and we can head over to the hospital."

She sniffed.  "If you insist."

Mark sighed as he snuck into the bathroom to pack a couple diapers for Ella, and to take some Compazine.  Forget the weak stuff – he could use morphine right about now.  A lot of it.

When they arrived at the hospital he said, "I have to stop by the lounge for a minute.  Do you know where the surgical lounge is?"

"No, how would I know that?"

"I – uh – hey, Jerry?"  Mark waved at him as he sat at the desk eating a donut.  "Would you show Mrs. Corday where to go?"

"Dr. Greene!  Hi!  Um.  Yes.  Sure.  Mrs. Corday?"

"Mark, where are you going?" she demanded.

"I'll be right there," he promised.  Susan had told him she had a present for Ella in her locker.  ("When you go to get it, try and talk to Carter," she'd prodded him.  "He needs that.")

When he entered the lounge, Kerry Weaver was standing in the corner with Gallant.  Mark hoped that after giving him a solemn little wave she would be occupied with Gallant.  Gallant looked like he'd seen a ghost – _I'm not dead quite yet, _Mark thought grumpily. But just as he was pulling the silver-paper wrapped gift from Susan's locker, Kerry told Gallant to go and said, "Hi, Mark."

He stood sheepishly next to Susan's locker.  "Hi, Kerry."

"How are you?"

"Good.  Perfect."

"I'm glad."  She nodded briskly.  "Do you know when Susan's coming back?"

"She hasn't called since last night."

"Tell her good luck."

"I will."

The door opened to reveal Carter, who was rubbing his eyes in that boyish way he had when he was tired.  Mark stood guiltily, still holding the big gift clumsily in two hands, and Carter stopped short.  His eyes went wide and sad when he caught sight of Mark.

Kerry looked back and forth between the two of them and said, "I'll see you later, Mark."

Another brisk nod.  Mark felt bad; after all, they'd known each other for so long, and although he didn't particularly like her, he also disliked the sight of her leaving with her head bowed.  "Hey, Kerry," he said just before she left.

She stopped.

"I heard through the grapevine that you're going to be promoted."

"Hey, I didn't know that," Carter said.

Kerry smiled slightly.  "I'll be Chief of Staff.  Romano's leaving."

"That's too bad," Mark deadpanned.

The three of them shared a laugh.

"Congratulations," he said.

They were both aware of the irony.  Kerry had stepped on Mark's own head to get where she was.  She looked away.  "Thanks."  

She nodded a good-bye, and Carter sat heavily on the couch, looking up at Mark.

"You left," he said, his voice cracking.

 "Yeah.  You saw Romano that last day.  He says jump, I jump."

But with Carter the joking fell flat; the younger man had outlived so many of his friends and yet he still broke every time it happened.  "You didn't do much in the way of good-byes," Carter said.

Slowly Mark put the present down on the table.  "No," he agreed.  "I should have said something to you."

He swallowed, looking sick and sad.  Mark lifted his hands, helpless, and after a long hesitation he said what he knew he should have said before.  "When I met you on your first day here, all dressed up in that designer coat, I never imagined you'd make this good a doctor.  But you are a good doctor, a great doctor maybe.  And you have your life fixed up."

"Not quite," Carter muttered.

Ah, woman problems.  Of course.  Mark knew the feeling, knew the story.  But, "You do.  And I am proud of you.  Very proud."

Carter didn't seem to be able to respond.  He opened his mouth, made an inarticulate sound, passed his hand across his eyes again, and then stood up.  In three steps he'd crossed the room and wrapped Mark in a bear hug.  Despite the pain of being crushed so, Mark smiled.

"Love you too, man," he teased.

"Thanks, Mark," Carter said as he released him.  "Thank you." 

~

"Lizzie, you done?"

"Does it _look_ like I'm done?"

Elizabeth was flushed and harried from dealing with Babcock and missing Ella's party, and she wasn't particularly pleased to have Robert bothering her.

"I was trying to enjoy a little quiet time in the lounge, but it looks like _that's _out the window," he said.  "Your whole family decided to show up.  Mark, Ella, Isabelle…"

"They're here?"

"In the flesh.  Want me to close for you?"

"No, no, I'm almost done.  Tell them I'll be right there."

 "Will do," he sing-songed cheerfully.

Elizabeth smiled under her mask, flooded with relief that she wouldn't be missing the big day after all.  It seemed like forever since she'd seen Ella; she had begun to wonder if she could handle the strain of giving her up, even if they all knew it was temporary.

When she entered the lounge, everyone was there as promised – Isabelle standing by the counter, Mark and Ella sitting in a chair together, Ella on Mark's lap.  There were a couple of presents sitting at the table, including the ones Elizabeth had dropped off earlier.

She passed her mother and swooped over to Mark, lifting her daughter and kissing her chubby face.  "Hi honey," she cooed.  "It's your birthday!  You're a whole year old today!  You happy?  Yeah?"

Ella gurgled.  "Da-da."

"How about 'mama'?  Can you say 'ma-ma'?"

"Da-da."

"Hmm."  Elizabeth looked over at Mark, who shrugged with a little smile.  "Still nothing else, I suppose."

"Just da-da.  What can I say, I'm a pretty important guy."

"Hah."  She kissed Ella again.  "Well, let's open the presents, shall we?  I've got to scrub in on that fibular transfer in twenty minutes."

They sat Ella on Mark's lap at the table, though Elizabeth half-consciously worried that even the small weight of their daughter might hurt him.  Elizabeth and her mother stood by, watching Mark unwrap the gifts for Ella – who was far more interested in a scrap of bright-pink wrapping paper than in the enclosed jumper that Isabelle had knitted herself, or the presents that Elizabeth and Mark had so carefully picked out.

"That's beautiful, Mum," Elizabeth said when Mark opened Isabelle's gift.  "Really."

"Don't you remember I knitted you all your jumpers when you were little?"

Elizabeth thought hard, but had no recollection of this whatsoever.  "Right," she said vaguely.

"And Susan got you a present, too!" Mark was murmuring to Ella.  "Last one…"

Elizabeth looked around, finally remembering to ask, "Where is Susan, anyway?"

Isabelle shrugged and waved her hands as if it were unimportant.  "Mark's girlfriend?  She ran off to New York, or whatever."

"What?  Why?"

"Something about her sister.  The sister's on drugs, or used to be on drugs… really, I didn't pay much attention."  Isabelle paused when she saw the pretty pink sundress Susan had bought for Ella.  She lowered her voice as Mark began unwrapping the next present, oblivious to the two women.  "I got a good look at her the other day.  She's not a real blonde."

"_Mother_," Elizabeth said, rolling her eyes.  "You're not a real redhead."

"I was."

"Not anymore," she retorted.

They fell silent.  Isabelle said, her voice falling even lower, "So is it serious?  Does he love her?"

"I suppose so," Elizabeth said.  "I think he loved her before I came along, even.  At least, that's what I've gathered."

"Cold soup warmed over, that sort of thing."

"I don't even know whether it did get 'cold,'" she said.  "He might have forgotten her completely, or he might have thought about her every day that we were together.  I don't know, I never will.  It's a mystery to me."

Isabelle thought about this for a long time.  "I saw the way he looked at you on your wedding day.  And the way you looked at him.  He wasn't thinking of anyone else."

"We cared about each other, very much, for a long time."  Elizabeth thought back to the day she and Mark missed a brightly lit boat and began a calm, carefully thought-out relationship.  And then she thought of the way his arm had been intertwined with Susan's that day she saw them come in together; they had looked completed by each other, drunk on each other.  "But that was all it was," she finished.  "He and Susan had something more … romantic."

Her mother's eyes were turned sharply upon her now.  "I don't know why you're so attracted to men who drive you crazy, instead of men like Mark.  Good men, uncomplicated."

"Heredity perhaps?"

A smile, a very small one.  "Perhaps."

At that point, Robert entered the lounge and caught sight of their conversation.  "Hey, Lizzie," he greeted her, approaching with a mischievous light in his eyes.

"Mother, do you remember Dr. Romano?"

"Yes, he made a bet you'd be left at the altar," Isabelle answered.  "I remember him very well."

Robert lifted an eyebrow.  "I told Lizzie to convey my greetings to you, but I have a feeling she didn't.  What brings you to Chicago, stargazing or family ties?"

"Ella's birthday."

He nodded over at Ella.  "That's a beautiful kid.  Looks nothing like her father."

"_Robert_," Elizabeth said, trying not to laugh.

Romano matched Isabelle's glare with an insouciant stare, but after a few seconds, tired of the game, he took his leave with a nod and headed over to the refrigerator to grab a can of Mountain Dew.  High caffeine – they'd both been on all night and ended up staying half the day because of a chain-reaction auto accident that seemed to injure half the city of Chicago.

"Speaking of complicated," Elizabeth said, as he sat down out of their earshot with his soda.

Isabelle sniffed.  "He's not complicated, he's just a bastard."

"I don't know," Elizabeth said.  _He kisses well_, she wanted to say – a leftover, adolescent impulse to make her mother's jaw drop in shock.  Instead she said, "He and I haven't exactly been enemies lately."

 "Elizabeth!" Isabelle said, understanding her meaning instantly.  "You _are_ joking."

Elizabeth's contrary side rose to the fore whenever Isabelle was around.  She knew this, but nevertheless she gave in to her reflexes.  "Try me," she said, her voice dripping, daring.

"You're involved with that pompous little prick after giving up a man like Mark Greene?"

"No, no, no.  We're not 'involved' and do keep your voice down, please.  I thought about it, but –"

"But he's not worth your little finger?" prompted Isabelle.

"But I'm _still not sure_," Elizabeth corrected her.

"Take my advice, Elizabeth," Isabelle said, although she knew the very word 'advice' was enough to infuriate Elizabeth.  "You'd be better off living the rest of your life alone."  She caught Elizabeth's knowing look.  "I'm not bitter, you know.  I've chosen my life."

"Are you happy?"

Isabelle refused for once to be insulted.  "I'm not a family woman – I've tried it and it didn't fit me."  She shrugged this off.  "Besides, I never realized my old age would be so much fun, until I got there."

Her hostility dissipated.  "Mother, you'll never really be old."

After taking a sip of her soda, Isabelle shook her head.  "We all get old."  Her voice grew pointed.  "I hear you have a promotion."

"Oh – right," she said distractedly.  "I'll be chief of surgery."

"How in the world did that happen?"  Isabelle paused, her eyes alighting on Romano.  "On second thought, I already have a few guesses about that."

"I hope the word you're thinking is 'talent,'" Elizabeth said, setting her lips firmly against the hurt she was feeling.

"If you insist."

"I do insist!  Mother, do you think that poorly of me?"

"I haven't said a word," she protested.

"No," Elizabeth said.  "You didn't have to."

Mark interrupted them.  "Hey Isabelle, will you take a picture of us?" he asked, tossing her his camera.

Putting an arm around Mark, Elizabeth crouched to the level of where Ella was sitting on his lap.  They grinned cheesily, and after Isabelle had snapped a picture she said, "You'll make copies for me."

"Yes, ma'am," Mark said.

"Me too," Elizabeth added.

"Of course."

"Bye Ella," Elizabeth said, dropping a kiss on the latter's head.  "See you later sweetie."

"Where are you going?" Isabelle said.

"I have surgery," Elizabeth said coolly.

She looked around and saw Robert, sitting serenely on his chair with a newspaper, and walked over to pull him upright.  "Hey," he squawked with a slight grimace.  "Lizzie, did you want all of me or just the dismembered arm?"

"All of you," she said, pulling a naughty face.

His mouth twitched.  "Well?  For any particular reason?"

"Want to assist my fibular transfer?"

"You need help?"

"No, I'd just like some company."  God, she was such a child.  Flirting with the forbidden.  A twelve-year-old climbing trees because Madame Corday thought it improper.  Did her mother have so much influence over her still?

--No, she answered herself, not really.  It wasn't just Isabelle motivating her at the moment.  She already liked having Robert around, already enjoyed this flirtation they'd been carrying on.  She'd just wanted an excuse to tease him.

"All right," he said.  "Let's do it."

She avoided her mother's probing, critical eyes.  "Bye, Mum."

"Elizabeth," Isabelle answered with a nod, and then, grudgingly, added, "Dr. Romano."

"Always a pleasure," Romano returned cheerily.

Before they left, Elizabeth lifted Ella up for a hug and a kiss.  "Bye, Ella," she said, ruffling the blond curls affectionately as she handed her back to her father's arms.  "I'll see you soon, okay?  Bye-bye!"

"Mama," Ella said.


	17. Passing Tenderness

**Chapter 17.****  Passing Tenderness**

Susan had known the minute Mark called her this morning, ostensibly to explain in a shaky voice that he couldn't fly out to New York because Chris was suddenly too busy to watch Ella and Elizabeth had three procedures scheduled for today, that he was lying.  Still she'd let him fake it, acted like she had no idea, for his sake.  She had thought of flying home, knowing that he must have gotten worse overnight, but realized that was exactly what he didn't want.  _But every day means so much now…_

The officer who'd helped her find Suzie looked curiously at her from his perch on the exam room bed.  "What did you say?"

She hadn't realized she'd been speaking aloud.  She'd just been keeping Bosco company while he waited for the nurse to come around with his tetanus shot, and their conversation had hit a lull.  "Nothing."

"Worried about your sister?"

"I'm worried that she doesn't get that she's got a problem.  A big problem."

"I—"

"You hate junkies.  I know, you've said so already."

"No, I was just gonna say I think she's got the picture."

"Maybe."

"Yeah, you can never be sure with these people."

She didn't like that turn of phrase, _these people.  But Bosco wasn't much for tact, and this was somehow his attempt to be kind to her.  She looked up at him and realized that in another second he'd be flirting with her outright._

Susan stood up and waved cheerfully.  "Good luck with those needles, I'd better go up and check on those two girls."

Taking the hint, Bosco nodded and lifted the uninjured hand.  "See you around, Lewis."

"Thanks for your help," she added as she headed over to the coffee machines to get a quick caffeine fix for herself and Chloe.

It was on her way to the room that she noticed the familiar back of her sister traveling down the hall with her daughter in her arms.

"Oh my God," she muttered and then yelled her sister's name.

~

Ten minutes later, Susan was walking, or chasing, Chloe as the latter strode down the sidewalk with Suzie.  "I'll do an outpatient program, Suze," she promised blithely.  "It'll all be fine.  Look, I'm really not that sick."

Finally, losing her temper and forgetting that Suzie was right there, Susan gripped her sister's arm, not quite gently.  As Chloe squawked Susan hissed, "You are not doing this to her again."

Chloe shook off her hand and patted Suzie's head protectively.  "I'm not doing anything to her," she said.  "Look, it'll all be _fine_."

Susan couldn't believe Chloe was actually _smiling, like this was the goddamn first day of the rest of her life or something.  She took a few seconds to decide what to say and finally just said limply, "Can I buy you guys some dinner first?"_

"I don't know…"

"Please," she said.  "Chloe, please?"

At the nearest Uno's, while Suzie was occupied with her pizza, Susan attempted again to reason with Chloe, her voice lowered.  "I'll take Suzie," she offered, as she had earlier today.  "I'll take her, you can fix yourself up."

"I don't need to be fixed!  Can't you understand I'm not a loser like I used to be?"

"You can beat this Chloe, but you haven't yet.  Your daughter ended up in a drug den, in danger, because you were too busy getting high to notice.  You _promised _me you could take care of her."

Chloe blinked slowly and glanced at Suzie, who looked just like she had dipped her face in a bowl full of pizza sauce.  "I can take care of her," she insisted falteringly.

"Yeah.  As soon as you get out of rehab, you'll be a great mother.  But right now, you have a problem."

Chloe sat back.  A long time passed, while Susan wondered if she'd ever get through.  Finally she said, "So … if I stayed at a center for like, three months … you'd keep her with you in New York?  Joe wouldn't be able to get at her?"

"She'll be safe with me."  She kept her voice very low as if not to shatter her own diffident hope.  Still Chloe didn't seem quite convinced, and Susan added, "You know I love you, right?  I'm not trying to hurt you.  I want you to be able to take care of her someday."

"It was just a little slip…  I mean, just a couple times.  It's not like I'm back where I was or anything."

Susan didn't need to say anything for Chloe to realize she was grasping at excuses.  "Hey," she said after awhile, "I've lost my job already anyway, what's the diff?"  After a long pause, Chloe added in a loud, falsely cheerful voice, "I guess we're going to move to Chicago, Suzie!"

"We?" Susan repeated with a resigned grin.

Chloe shrugged, both resigned and optimistic at the same time.  "Why not?"

~

Lunch definitely wasn't going well, Romano thought as he and his niece ate in silence.  She'd called him, wanting to spend a day seeing the town while she was back here visiting her grandmother.

"So," he said, breaking the silence.  "Have you seen the Art Institute's new Paris exhibit?"

"No, I haven't had time," Taryn said.  "I've spent the last week at the hospital, basically."

He nodded.  "Maybe we should go see that.  It's supposed to be great."

"Uncle Bob?"

"What?"

"Grandma's not doing that well, is she?"

"No."

"Is she dying?"

"She's been going downhill since she took that fall," he said, knowing his voice sounded brusque and powerless to be kinder about it.  "She doesn't have long."

"Does she know?"

"I don't think so."

She looked like she wanted to say more, but after he had waited a few minutes she put down her fork and said, "I'll get the check."

"Don't be silly," he said.

Taryn nodded.  Romano sat back in his chair, looking surreptitiously at her.  They'd always had a fairly good relationship, comfortable even if they weren't best friends or anything like that.  Now, maybe because she was pretty much grown-up now or maybe because neither of them were very good with talking about things like this, she seemed impatient with him.

He knew that feeling, wanting your family to go as far away as possible.

They took the El to the Art Institute, Taryn taking out her cell phone to check her messages and perhaps, he thought rather wistfully, to avoid the black hole of conversation that they had been stuck in for the last hour.  She was the only member of his family that he was remotely interested in keeping up a relationship – but it looked like that was shot to hell like everything else.

As they entered the photography wing, he made a lame attempt at conversation.  Something about the Monet he'd seen here before.  Taryn was patently distracted, perhaps by thoughts of her grandmother.

Suddenly Romano broke off, looking straight ahead of them.  He'd caught sight of two familiar heads of bright red hair.  "Hey," he said, tapping Elizabeth on the shoulder.

She turned around, looking as frazzled as she usually did when she was with Isabelle.  "Robert!"

The four of them circled around, introducing each other.  Isabelle was clearly examining Taryn's clothes, which looked fashionable, whatever else they might be.  He wasn't sure whether they would pass muster with Isabelle; frankly, he wasn't even sure they _were fashionable._

"Taryn," she said, like a cat with a mouse in her paws.  "What do you do?"

"I'm a copy editor."

"Hmm."

Romano tried to break in.  "Have you ladies seen the Paris exhibit yet?  It's supposed to be good."

Isabelle ignored him.  "With whom?"

Before answering, Taryn shot a look at Romano.  Then she said, "Actually I'm unemployed at the moment.  Random House fired me."

"Really?  I would think your 'ACLU' would be quite indignant if a woman were fired for how she dressed."  Isabelle pronounced ACLU exactly as if it stood for a particularly noxious strain of the stomach flu.

Over Elizabeth's murmured reproof, Taryn answered, "Actually, it was purely budgetary.  They fired plenty of women in old-fashioned clothes like yours, too."

After a pause, Isabelle said, "Do you like Van Gogh?"

Romano exchanged an amused glance with Elizabeth.  Unruffled by the sudden thaw, Taryn shrugged and said, "Yeah, he's pretty cool."

"There's quite a good selection on the third floor.  We should take a stroll up there, you'd appreciate it."

It took three seconds for Taryn to shrug again and follow Isabelle towards the elevators, tossing a "See you in awhile, Uncle Bob" over her shoulder.  The two disappeared into the crowds, already in the middle of a peppery conversation.  Left alone, Romano and Elizabeth smiled at each other for a moment, disconcerted.  Elizabeth was shaking her head.

"Looks like you and I just got ditched," Romano said wryly.

"They're certainly getting on splendidly," Elizabeth said.  "How on earth did that happen?"

He laughed.  "You know, there are few things I understand less than my niece."

"She's a bit like you," Elizabeth said, her eyes pensively raking over Romano.

"Don't let her hear you talking like that," he cracked.

"Oh, don't be silly," she said, shoving his shoulder lightly.  It was a gesture he'd seen Elizabeth make, but never to him.  A twinkle passed from her eye to light his smile.  Then she said, "Since those two may have ditched us entirely, we shouldn't stand around here like lumps waiting for them."

"That would be boring," he agreed.

Their eyes met.  Elizabeth grinned.  "Then we need to keep ourselves occupied, don't we?"

~

It had been half an hour, and Elizabeth and Robert were still downstairs waiting for her mother to bring Taryn back.  They had been walking, often in silence, sometimes teasing each other. 

When they reached the photography exhibit, Elizabeth suddenly found herself lost in a crowd of teenagers with Worcester accents.  She circled the room, didn't find Robert, and sat down on a bench, looking at an odd black-and-white photograph.

She knew she hadn't smiled this much in weeks, until today she suddenly felt light as air.  She also knew that Robert noticed the smiles, noticed the way things had been changing.  For some reason he seemed wary of her, his gaze sharply fixed upon her when he thought she wasn't looking.

After a few minutes she felt someone settle down beside her.  Romano said, "You know, I've been chatting up this cute blonde on the other side of the room, but if you're in need of some company I'm always up for some semi-acrimonious banter instead."

Elizabeth couldn't help but be glad to see him.  "How magnanimous of you."

"I've been watching you sitting here and staring at nothing for about five minutes now."

She wasn't about to tell him she'd been mooning over him like a teenager in puppy love.  "I was taking a break.  I couldn't find you."

"You weren't looking hard enough," he teased.  "So what's so fascinating about Atget that you decided to sit on this bench and scrutinize him till the cows come home?"

"Atget?" she echoed.

He nodded to the photograph hanging on the wall in front of them, a black-and-white picture of a bunch of corsets hanging on the wall.  "The French guy whose work you've been staring at in such apparent fascination.  He isn't bad, although it doesn't mean much until you've been to Paris and seen how different it is from the way it used to be, how monumental the change was that he spent his life taking pictures of it."

Elizabeth was used to his occasional bombastic speeches, but she still found herself raising her eyebrows skeptically.  "Since when did you become an art history expert?"

"I majored in art history in college."

"Really," she said.

"Nope.  I keep art history books on my coffee table for when I have important guests.  It wouldn't do to appear uncultured."

"You're absolutely shameless," she informed him.

"I've always thought that was part of my distinctive charm."

"I could comment on that, but I'll let you imagine what I'm thinking."

He clucked his tongue.  "That's something I've found difficult lately.  Which is probably why the question retains such a fascination."

Elizabeth met his eyes.  "Then I'll try to remain opaque."

That, to her surprise, elicited a bitter kind of laugh from him.  The friendly moment broke into a rough, edgy kind of unease as Robert said, "Do me a favor – don't do that."

"Do what?" she asked, not quite innocently.

He shook his head without breaking their gaze.  "This back-and-forth thing.  I'm tired of it."

She hardly heard him, occupied with noticing in tremulous detail how dark his eyes were in even this bright light, and how close his face was to hers.  He flinched a little at her scrutiny, but couldn't, or wouldn't, tear his eyes away.

When she kissed him, his hand fluttered to her face, fingers feather-light against her cheek.  Light, impulsive, it was over before it had even begun and then she was breathlessly leaning back and he was standing hastily, his hand lingering near her for a moment even after he had started backing away.

"Robert?" she forced out as he paused, two steps away from her, poised to go further.  The space between them ignited with attraction, and Robert took yet another step backwards.

"I should go find the others," he said.

She pressed the fingers of one hand to her forehead.  "You can't wait thirty seconds?"

He hesitated.  "I'll … uh … I'll be back.  Okay?"

Elizabeth looked down at her hands.  "Okay."

Before he went upstairs to find their recalcitrant relatives, he passed close by her, and his hand brushed her shoulder in passing tenderness.  Elizabeth closed her eyes against the overhead lights that seemed too bright, too honest, mocking the enormous chance she'd just taken in broad daylight.  She had no idea what he was thinking, but she was starting to understand all too well the allure of opacity. 


	18. Just Enough

**Chapter 18.****  Just Enough**

Susan panicked, instinctively, when she got home and heard Suzie crying.

As she ran into the main room of her apartment, her vision blurring into a sea of color, the blue of the Ninja Turtles backpack sitting on the kitchen table and the satiny brown of the bare wooden floor and the uneven white of the peeling wall, she had already begun to blame Chloe.  Then she stopped to look, and it was only one of those moments that every childhood is made up of.  Suzie had scraped her knee; Chloe was putting a Yu-Gi-Oh bandaid on it.

Flooded with relief, Susan grinned and then remembered to stop smiling; Suzie wasn't fond of blood and wouldn't appreciate Susan looking amused.

"Hey, honey," she said, dropping her things on the floor (not like the rest of the apartment was so clean anyway) and coming over to kneel by her niece with a sympathetic face.

"Aunt Susan," Suzie wailed, hamming it up a little to squeeze out all the sympathy she could.  Susan hugged her, and smiled conspiratorially over her head at Chloe.  "I hurt my knee."

"Oh, does it hurt?"

"Yeeees," she wailed.

"Let me see."  Suzie lifted her knee awkwardly so Susan could see the little scrape bandaged over and kiss it to make it feel better.

Chloe seemed guilty.  "We were playing hide-and-seek; she tripped."

Susan shook her head.  No need to defend yourself, she would have said if Suzie weren't right there.

Later, much later, when Suzie was occupied with a bedtime snack of crackers and peanut butter, Chloe joined Susan on the couch.  Susan was reading the _Annals, Chloe __Entertainment Weekly._

Over their magazines, in very low voices, Susan said, "What time's your meeting tonight?"

"Seven," Chloe said after awhile.

"You're going to go, right?" she said leadingly.

Chloe nodded, resigned.  "Right."

Susan met her sister's eyes and knew that Chloe's optimistic resolve from their dinner in New York had already worn off, and the harshness of the regular routine was already wearing on her.  She would have to be careful.

The phone rang.  Chloe picked up on the second ring and said brightly, "Lewis residence."  After a pause, she handed the receiver to Susan.  "It's your boyfriend."

_Boyfriend.  When was the last time she'd heard that word?  Susan was smiling when she said, "Mark?"_

"Hey," he said.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know.  I mean, I think something's wrong—"

"Mark!" she interrupted.

"Rachel's not here."

Susan checked her watch.  Eight PM.  "It's a school night."

"I _know_ that!  She didn't tell me or Chris that she'd be out.  I bet she's running around with Andy, getting stoned or doing God knows what in that car of his…"

"Doesn't she have a cell phone?"

"She's not picking up.  The phone has caller ID, so she knows when I'm calling."

"Oh."  Susan sighed.  "Do you want me to come over with Suzie?"

He paused.  "It's almost her bedtime."

"Chloe has a meeting tonight, but when she's done I'll come over," Susan said.

"Okay."

"Love you."

"You too."

~

He looked in the door every time he passed, out of habit maybe, or maybe because she was the constant preoccupation of his thoughts, spare thoughts and the thoughts that should have been used up on other things, during surgery or meetings or press conferences.

Often Elizabeth wasn't there; their job precluded much time sitting around behind a desk with pen and paper.  This time she was, and Romano felt his steps slow involuntarily to look: the head bent slightly, resting in a slender hand; the hair spilling over hand and shoulder and back; the mouth he had kissed twice now, set firmly in concentration.

He had hardly spoken to her since the second kiss, that day in the museum.  It was his best chance, he thought, at self-protection.  He still didn't trust Elizabeth, she of the daring eyes and sharp appetites and unpredictable affection.  A woman after his own heart, which was the entire problem.

As he was thinking this, weakly defending his own choices yet again to the part of him that would always be ready to fall in love with her if she gave him the chance, she looked up and saw him lingering outside her door.

Her eyes went wide.  "Robert," she said, pushing her hair back as if it were he who had caught her doing something illicit.

Romano lifted a hand, a wave that also pushed her away.  "Lizzie," he said, clipping off the end of her name pointedly.  "Did you talk to Edson about his dictations?"

"He'll have them in by tomorrow," Elizabeth said, her eyes glinting with satisfaction.  He guessed she'd really gone to town on poor Edson, who would for ever and always be in Lizzie's bad graces.

"Good."

He left, sneaking a look back over his shoulder.  She'd thrown her pen down and was watching him go. 

This was ridiculous, all of this unspoken do-you-or-don't-you, watching and waiting bullshit.  He considered going back in there and telling her to leave him alone; he considered going in there and pulling her roughly to her feet and kissing her.  Either one would work.

He wished he knew what the hell he was doing.

And he kept wishing that all through the rest of the day until evening, when he finally finished his eighth appy of the month and went to his office to get his coat and papers.  Just as he approached the door he heard the phone ring and rushed to answer it, only to hear a woman crying on the other end of the phone.  It took him a few seconds to recognize Taryn's voice, because he still thought of her as a little girl.

"Taryn," Romano said sharply, but not unkindly.  "Is it my mother?"

"Yes," she said, another sob hacking with her answer.  "During her afternoon nap."

He sat down in his chair, so hard that his bones felt like they'd crack, and closed his eyes, listening to her cry.

Slowly her sobs turned to hiccupy breaths and she said, "Uncle Bob?"

"Yeah," he said.  "I'm coming."

"Thank you."

"Hang tight.  It'll take me a few minutes by car."

"Okay."

Romano hung up the phone and sat still, wrapping himself in silence.  He bent his head down, staring at his lap in a futile kind of shock.  He had known this was coming, and yet – he hadn't really _known_, so his bewildered, ambivalent grief hit him deep in the gut.

Minutes passed.  He noticed without reaction, as if his thoughts were somehow separate from himself, that he was wishing Elizabeth were here.  He was picturing her slipping into the room, imagining the way it would feel to hold her tightly, demanding comfort, being comforted.  Funny, how hard it could be to train yourself out of a bad habit.

The phone rang again.  He didn't answer, but after a few minutes his secretary came on again and said, "Dr. Romano?  It's Dr. Corday on line 1."

Funny how your wishes came true at all the wrong times.  He picked up and greeted her more curtly than his current mood should dictate, "Yeah."

"Hey," he heard Elizabeth's voice say breezily.

He put down his pen and leaned back in his chair, somewhat surprised by her levity, as if he'd been surprised that his pain didn't some how telepathically affect her.  "Lizzie.  What's sending your spirits so high?"

She was giggling, actually giggling.  "I'm a bit smashed, actually."

Reluctantly mollified, he said, "Where are you?"

"At that pub you took me to before."  Her voice changed, grew more flirtatious.  "Nice place, don't you think?"

"Sure," he agreed.

"You're nice on the phone," she observed.  "Much nicer."

He laughed, not quite kindly, everything _true that he wanted to say compressed into a sour note that lingered just under his amiability.  "Oh, am I."_

"Why aren't you nice when I'm around, hmm?" she slurred.  "All of a sudden."

"All of a sudden, what?" he said when she stopped talking.

"What?  Oh, right.  Yes, all of a sudden you're being quite difficult," she lectured unsteadily.  "I wish you wouldn't be so difficult."

"What do you want, Lizzie?" he said tiredly.

"Plenty of things," she answered.  "But I'd rather like if you showed up here right now.  I want to know why you're acting like this.  You ran away at the museum, why did you do that?"

"I didn't run away."

"Yes you did.  I kissed you and you ran like mad."

"Why don't we wait to talk about this till you're… yourself?"

Elizabeth gave a funny exaggerated sigh.  "I'm only myself when you're around, Robert."  She flicked his name off the end of that sentence like a reproach, like he should already know everything she was telling him, like they were best friends and knew each other by heart.

Before she'd called, he'd have run to her in a second if he'd known where she was.  But this was all wrong; she was drowning in synthetic laughter, and he felt too beaten to buoy her up.  "I'd hate to take advantage of a lady while she was drunk."

She snorted.  "I'm not a lady.  And I'm not _that drunk.  Just a little.  Just enough."_

"Then you're not too out of it to get yourself a cab and go home," he surmised pointedly.

He heard her breath catch, despite the staticky connection.  "Yes.  I'm not."

"Then do that."

"Of course Robert, whatever you say," she said, recovering her sarcasm.

"I don't want to think about how much you've had to drink to make you this way – I know you could drink me under the table any day of the week, so it must be quite a bit.  Just go home and we can talk later."

For a few seconds he could feel her wavering between hurt silence and pissy silence.  Then she discarded both and said simply, "I miss you."

Romano softened, against his will.  How could he answer that?  He hadn't gone anywhere and yet he knew the feeling, that age-old sense of emptiness he used to get when he needed Elizabeth and she wasn't around.  He wondered if that was what she meant.  

"Okay," he said after a long time.  "I know.  I miss you, too."

~

It was eleven before Rachel came home, hair flying loose and tangled and face triumphant until she saw Susan and Mark waking up from their light naps on the couch.

Mark rubbed his eyes, his body fighting his attempts to wake up.  "Rachel?" he mumbled.

Her mouth was gaping open, as if she'd somehow expected to sneak upstairs unseen.  "Um, hi Dad."

"Where were you?"

"Out," she shrugged with that little smirk of hers.

"With who?"

"With people.  My _friends.  And don't worry, we didn't ax-murder anyone."_

"What about drugs?  You can hardly blame me for being worried."

"God, Dad, what do you want to do, shut me up in my room twenty-four hours a day?  I have a life, you know, it doesn't mean I'm a horrible person."

A still sleepy Susan shifted her head off of Mark's shoulder as he stood up, supporting her gently with his hand as she slumped on her side on the couch.   He approached, speaking quietly and vehemently.  "I know you've gotten into this stuff, Rachel, and it's stupid to lie about it."

She made an indignant noise and then said, "So you're just going to make up your mind what the truth must be before I talk, and anything else I say is _obviously _a lie.  Really sensible, Dad."

He frowned, and then recovered himself.  "You had E in your backpack."

"Fine, just believe whatever you want to believe, it doesn't matter what kind of evidence or whatever you see to the contrary!" she threw back at him as she stormed upstairs.

"Wait—" he started, his voice falling fast to a murmur.

Susan had woken up after all the shouting and was rubbing her eyes, watching Mark stand impotently by the stairway.  He turned back to her, lifting his hands.  His bewilderment was so enormous that it filled the room – he knew now that he might die without ever getting this right.

"Are you going to go up there?" she asked quietly, her voice still phlegmy from sleep.

"No," he said heavily, sitting down next to her and resting in a slumped position.  

She reached over to rub the back of his neck languidly and, over his little noise of satisfaction, said, "What time is it anyway?"

"Eleven."  He shook his head.  "She's out of control, and I can't fix her."

"Fix her?" she repeated, not challenging the phrase exactly but echoing it, so that he wondered momentarily if he were still flailing in the dark here, completely clueless about what it meant to raise a child.

He withdrew from her hand and met her eyes, looking for reassurance and confirmation and finding only concern.  "I can't undo sixteen years of being a bad father.  I don't have long enough."

Susan examined him as if there were a million things she wanted to say, and none of them wholehearted agreement.  Mark felt his eyebrows knit a little in puzzlement, but then she blinked her disagreement away and smiled hesitantly at him, opting for silence.

As if they had never mattered, all the unanswered questions melted away into irrelevance.  He kissed her bruisingly, surprising her for a moment until she relaxed and giggled and kissed him back.  He would never get used to how beautiful it was to see Susan smile.


	19. Eclipse of the Heart

A/N: Well, I'm heading into the home stretch with this thing – just one more chapter left! – so hopefully you can all excuse the long length of this update (4200 words!), the repeat appearance of RacHell, and the unabashed descent into Cordano sappiness by the end of the chapter.

Title comes from the Bonnie Tyler song I was listening to while writing this chapter.  I confess, I'm an 80's girl at heart.  :)

Reviews still appreciated… many many thanks to all of you who have been weighing in for the past few updates, although I haven't said so in awhile. 

**Chapter 19.****  Eclipse of the Heart**

Elizabeth wasn't quite prepared to have Susan answer her knock at the door of her old house.

"Hey, Elizabeth," she said after a taut pause, obviously aware of Elizabeth's discomfort.

"Hi," she said.  "Erm…"

"Mark told me you were coming to see Ella," Susan said.  "Come on in."

Elizabeth followed Susan into the family room and looked around with a hard, dry swallow at her home.  It hadn't changed much.  Even the pictures on the mantel were almost the same – except one new picture at the far left.  She recognized Susan's smiling face next to Mark's.

"How is Ella?" she asked.

"Well, Mark probably told you she had a little fever yesterday, but it was gone by the time I put her to bed," Susan said.  "I bet she'll be happy to see you, though."

Elizabeth smiled.  "I'll go get her."

"She's up in her crib."  Susan headed into the kitchen.  "I made some coffee," she said, "how do you like yours?"

"One sugar," Elizabeth called softly from the stairs.

When she came back down cradling a sleepy Ella in her arms, Susan was in the family room with two cups of coffee on the table.  Elizabeth sat, kissing Ella's forehead.  She remembered thinking of the child as a bit of a nuisance during the worst part of her marriage to Mark – now it felt like the greatest gift to be able simply to hold her daughter in her arms.

"How is everything?" she asked Susan.

"Mark, you mean."

"I haven't seen him since Ella's birthday."

Susan nodded, understanding.  "Well, after the last Gamma treatment he really wasn't doing that well, but we upped the meds and he doesn't suffer too much anymore."

"Oh," Elizabeth said a little emptily.  _Anymore.  That was a word of finality._

Ella suddenly wriggled a little and said, "Ma-ma!"

Elizabeth snuggled against her.  "Yes honey, mama's here," she murmured, kissing Ella's face several times.  To Susan she asked, "How is the talking going?"

"She says ba-ba now when she's hungry," Susan said.

"Really?  That's lovely."

"And she calls me ga-ga," Susan said.  "I can't figure out what _that means."_

"Evil stepmother?" Elizabeth joked.

Susan grinned.  "Out of the mouths of babes."

"Exactly."

"Well—" she stood.  "I am supposed to go to work at some point today, so I should go home and check on my sister.  Chris is coming in a little late since you're here, but she should be here by nine or so."

"Does she stay here all the time?"

"Whenever I'm not here," Susan said.  "She was only too happy to increase her hours.  Economy's kicking her butt, along with everyone else's."

"I can imagine."

"When you see her, will you tell her to call me at the hospital so we can iron out tonight's schedule?" Susan said.

"Sure."

"Bye, Elizabeth."

She smiled.  "Have a good day."

**~**

"Mark?"

Mark groaned.

"Mark?"

He recognized Elizabeth's voice, coming from far away, without quite waking up.  "I don't want to get up yet," he mumbled.

"Mark, it's me," she said, and behind closed eyelids he listened to her footsteps padding towards him on the carpet of their bedroom.  "I came to visit Ella before work."

"No, you don't have work today," he argued, opening his eyes and trying to focus his blurry vision on his fiancée.  "You have to get ready for dinner.  I'm going to take you out to a restaurant!  I have it all planned."

Her eyes were so blue, and so dark with sadness.  "Mark, you told me to visit because Ella isn't feeling well," she insisted.

Finally he noticed that she had a child in her arms.  "Wait, visit who?" he asked, still confused.  "Why aren't you dressed to go out?  We have reservations at eight."

"I'm visiting _you," she said with a soft, sad calmness, reaching down to feel for fever.  Her hand was cool on his forehead._

Something jarred in his mind.  He bolted upright.  "Wait. … What time is it?" he demanded desperately.

"Six o'clock in the morning."  She leaned close to him, speaking intensely as her resolutely calm expression finally quavered.  "Mark, I don't live here anymore.  Do you remember?"

He stared at her, aware that his face was covered in frightened confusion.  Remember, remember, remember.  Elizabeth.  Rachel.  Ella.

_Susan._

Mark took an unsteady breath and the fleeting present returned to him.  "Yes.  Yes, of course I remember.  I was just – dreaming."

"Are you always altered when you're tired?" she asked quietly.

He blinked, reaching for his glasses on the nighttable.  Elizabeth noticed his groping search and put them on his face herself.  His vision shimmered into clarity, and with it his memory.  "I'm fine."

"I can call Susan in her car.  She only left a couple minutes ago."

"No, don't do that.  I just woke up.  I get it now."

She nodded, biting the inside of her lip again.  "You told me to wake you up when I got here."

"I know."  He looked up at her.  "How long are you hanging around for?"

"Till Chris gets here.  I only have an elective procedure today, and it's not till the afternoon."

"It must be nice to take it easy for a day," he said.

"And tomorrow," she sparkled, "I take over."

"The world?" he kidded her.

"Close.  The surgery department."

"Oh, that's right!" he said, remembering after a moment.  "Romano's leaving."

"County is soon to become a far easier place to work."

He fell back against his pillow, exhausted from sitting up for so long.  "So life's treating you well?"

"Very well."  Her voice grew softer.  "You?"

"Well… better than last week."

"I'm glad," she said with that lovely, sympathetic smile still on her face.

"Yeah."  He turned on his side to face her.  "I've missed you, you know.  I've missed that smile."

"I've missed you, too."

"I mean, we made the right choice—"

"Definitely."

"It's just…"

"…I miss being friends."

They laughed warmly; they'd never finished each other's sentences before, never been that well in sync.

"Yeah," he agreed.  "We didn't have a bad time, did we?  Not until the end."

"No," she said.  "We were lucky to have each other when we needed each other."

Mark said slowly, "I didn't want to do the dramatic good-bye thing with everyone, maybe because I'm a coward.  I couldn't face the idea.  But I should have talked to you a long time ago."

"You don't have to," she said, shaking her head uncomfortably.  Elizabeth was like that; she didn't want to hear these things, these difficult, painful, honest things.

"Yes I do.  I need you to know what I – or – how much you mean to me.  You, Ella, our family.  Such as it was."  He wanted to say more, but an enormous yawn cut him off.  He fought to keep his eyes open through increasing weariness.

"I know," she kept assuring him quietly, as he yawned again and sank back into a deep sleep.

~

When Mark woke up, Elizabeth was gone and Chris was holding Ella in her arms at the door, with the cordless phone from downstairs in one hand.  "Dr. Greene?" she said as his eyes opened.  "It's your daughter's school."

Groggily he reached out for the phone, and Chris approached to give it to him.  "Hello?"  His voice was scratchy.

"Is this Mark Greene?"

"Yes?"

"This is Ronnie Smith calling on behalf of Chicago P.S. 147.  It's about Rachel."

He was fairly sure he already knew where this was going.

"Can you come in to speak with me?"

"Look, uh…"  He sighed.  "If you could do it on the phone… this is not the best time."

"Yes, I understand – there are – circumstances."

"Right."  Circumstances, he thought sardonically.  Tactful lady.  "So, what did she do?"

"Truancy.  She was found on the grounds smoking marijuana when she was supposed to be in her history class, and speaking to her other teachers revealed a pattern of unexcused absences from class."

"Oh."

"She's been suspended for one week, and she'll be on probation till graduation."

"_Permanently?"_

"That's how we do things.  Substance abuse is a serious offense."

"Right, of course."

"She can be sent home on the school bus if you like, since it comes in an hour."

"That'd be fine."

He was sitting in the family room when Rachel came home, already with that look in her eyes as if they were just waiting to be rolled up to high heaven at the first word he said.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi," Rachel answered rather sourly.  She paused at the door after putting down her almost-empty backpack, and they stared at each other for a few seconds.

"Cutting class, huh?" Mark said, breaking the silence.

"It was one history class," she said.  "The teacher's stupid anyway, he just shows us movies about, like, Abraham Lincoln all the time, and how he's _so great, and he's this big hero.  Or Thomas Jefferson, or whoever.  The kids who do show up just take naps on their desk.  Even Mr. Grossman can't stay awake."___

"At least they're not getting stoned," he countered.

Ah, yes, there it was, the eye-roll.  "That was the other kid with me.  I was just there."

"Rachel, I may have a brain tumor, but my head hasn't entirely stopped working."

She blinked.

"You're using," he said.  "I don't know what or when or how often or how long, but I was a kid once too."

"Sure, Dad, I'm just this _kid who has no idea what I'm doing, I'm out of control, I'm on drugs…"_

Mark heard the hurt in her voice, finally, after hearing nothing but the outward anger for a long time.  He'd given up on her – _and she'd noticed, when he thought she simply didn't care.  _

The thought presented itself unexpectedly in Mark's mind, that Susan would never give up on _her family.  She never left Chloe to battle life out for herself, never allowed herself to believe that it wasn't worth loving her._

With new resolve, Mark made an attempt to stand, but decided failure wouldn't be worth the effort and fell backwards.  "All right, Rachel," he said.  "Come here."

She looked ready to stomp upstairs, but must have decided that it was a cheap shot to run away when he couldn't even get up; so she settled for stomping to the couch instead.  "Yeah?"  Arms crossed, she waited pugnaciously.

He leaned forward, fixing her with his eyes.  "I've made too many mistakes as a father," he said.  "I was going to give up, but I love you.  I won't give up on this.  On being a dad."

"Yeah, whatever."

Good thing he hadn't expected her to melt into tears of gratitude; this revelation, this epiphany was for him only.  "Okay," he said.  "Since you're such an adult, you tell me.  What kind of punishment do you think you deserve?"

Rachel stared at him in annoyed confusion; she wasn't going to play this game.  Mark had no idea what he was doing, but he was beginning to think parenting was like that.  The best he could offer might not be perfect, but it might just be enough.

~

"Well," Edson said as he left Elizabeth's office, "Good night."

Elizabeth was in too grumpy a mood to return the sentiment very affectionately.  "Good night," she answered crisply.  She couldn't _believe she had just made him her associate chief; there had been something so smug in that round face when he learned about his little promotion.  His was the last career she wanted to have a hand in improving._

Well, she'd do to Edson what Romano had done to her.  Saddle him with all the unpleasant tasks and watch him suffer quietly in the hopes of making chief himself at some later date.  But with a little more human decency.  And without all the inappropriate workplace flirtation.

Her own indulgent laugh at this thought startled her.  Oh, that man had gotten into her head!  And clearly, he no longer wanted to be there.  Last week she'd found out that his mother had died several days previously; he'd been at the funeral when she found out, and so she'd been reduced to sending him a card (so hypocritical, since all she knew of the woman was that he had never gotten along with her; she'd written "I know how much she meant to you" and felt like a fool).  She'd told him she was sorry in a short, awkward conversation the next day.  His face marked more by puzzlement than sadness, he'd thanked her the way a man thanks a stranger in the reception line at a funeral.

Since then, they'd barely spoken.  Robert was stubborn and, at this point, also very confusing.  She'd started to miss even his rambling conversations about no discernible topic as they performed procedure after procedure together in starkly professional calmness.  And she definitely missed that bubbly feeling she'd had at the museum, when they were just Lizzie and Robert, without all the barriers of real life and real history between them. 

With Edson out of sight Elizabeth checked her watch and realized, with a shock of real panic, that Robert could be gone at any minute.  Could already be gone.  Unceremoniously she stood up and walked briskly to his office.

The door was open.  She stood outside for a moment, watching Robert staring pensively into one of the small cardboard boxes sitting open on his desk.  Finally, realizing that she was almost spying, she said from the doorway, "Having second thoughts?"

He looked up with an almost-smile when he heard her voice.  "Not quite yet.  But I am having second thoughts about waiting to move all these things till the last day."

"Can I help?"  She made her voice lighter.  "Unless it would hurt your male ego to allow it."

"Lizzie, watching you in surgery is much more humbling than any more menial tasks could be."  He closed the flaps of the box he'd been staring aimlessly into.  "Go ahead, help away."

She surveyed his desk with a critical eye.  "You're not even done packing."

"When I said 'help,' did you hear 'narrate'?" he queried.

"I didn't hear 'thank you,'" she retorted.

"Then your ears _are working," he said.  "Intermittently, at least.  Would you do me a favor and get the rest of the books on the shelf into that box?"_

"Whatever you say, Robert," she grumbled.

He laughed suddenly.

"What?" she said, taking out a few heavy volumes of the leather-bound Encyclopedia Britannica and plopping them into the box.

"Well, you said the exact same thing – wait, not those, they're from '99.  Northwestern will get me a new set, you can just throw these out."  Elizabeth sighed and moved the encyclopedias back to the shelf.  Romano continued, "You said the same thing on the phone the other day, if I recall correctly."

She winced.  "Oh, that."

"Yeah."  He was enjoying this.  "That."

"I called you from the pub," she recalled slowly.

"You certainly did," he said, containing his smile.  "Quite a conversation."

"It was?" she said, slightly nervous.  She did vaguely remember talking to him, and asking him … what was it? … something about that kiss at the museum. 

And telling him she wasn't a lady.  Elizabeth remembered _that quite clearly.  But much of the rest had blurred into mere impressions, sight and touch and sound blending indistinctly.  The taste of beer; the smell of smoke; the bad oldies station playing in the background._

"Yeah," he said.  "It was hard to understand through all the slurring, but there was a lot of raving about how well I kiss."

"Really?" she said, horrified.  She had entertained quite a few lucid thoughts on the subject, but… "I don't remember saying anything like _that."_

He grinned.  "That's because you didn't.  I was making it up."

"You're horrid."

"Now, that's nothing like what you told me on the phone," he said in mock sadness.

Elizabeth decided that this conversation was getting too humiliating and returned her attention to the rest of the books on the shelf.  "How are you going to carry this box all the way to the car?" she said eventually.  Granted it was only a small box, six inches deep at most.  But filled with books…

"Well, what do you think I do with my gym membership card, use it to spice up my wallet?"

_Ooh, touchy, she thought with amusement.  They fell into a silence easier than their usual heavy pauses, and Elizabeth settled into an easy rhythm of lifting each book with one hand and putting it in the box with the other.  She filled two cardboard boxes, and only then did her knees begin to feel sore from crouching on the ground.  Elizabeth checked her watch; half an hour had passed._

She turned to say something to Robert, but when she saw him standing at his desk in perfect motionlessness she hesitated, not wanting to interrupt the moment.  His eyes were fixed on a drawer open in front of him.

"Robert?" she ventured after a few indeterminate seconds had passed.

He looked up and snapped the drawer shut as if ashamed of his reverie.  "Yeah.  You almost done?"

"I'm finished," she said, standing on stiff limbs.  "All packed."

She looked around the room.  It was so empty now, just a bookcase without books, and a wall without paintings, and that bare satinwood desk.  _Her office, her desk, now.  She would sit here tomorrow, and she would think of him._

"Time to go," he said.

Elizabeth looked at him questioningly.  "How many trips will it take you to get all these to your car by yourself?"

He smirked.  "You offering some … womanpower?"

"Why not?" she said.

"I see," he nodded.  "You're just dying to get rid of me as fast as possible."

"Well, how else would I have gotten such a nice office?"

They traipsed in and out to his car twice, each cradling a cardboard box, and bantering with at least an appearance of casual amusement the entire time.  After the last trip, Robert went back inside to get his briefcase.  A little out of breath from exertion, Elizabeth walked by his side back to the office.

Standing at his desk, he snapped his briefcase shut and hauled it onto the smooth desktop surface before turning to face Elizabeth, who was leaning against the wall by the door.  She was physically tired from the work of bringing that last box of books outside, but she knew why she was really having trouble standing.  There was an easy escape beckoning, and as usual her instincts were begging her to make use of it, to let him make the move of leaving without trying to talk him back into her life.

Romano's eyes softened as he saw her gnawing at the inside of her cheek.  "Thanks for your help," he said matter-of-factly.

"It was nothing," she said with a small sigh.

He nodded, his face infuriatingly enigmatic.  Elizabeth felt sick; his eyes were like rocks, hard and unflinching.  He was giving her nothing.  "So I guess this is it," he said.

"You'll keep in touch, won't you?" she said; not quite a casual remark, but not much more than the insincere entreaty of one colleague to another.

"Of course," he said, with the same air of a polite colleague.

Well, at this rate they'd never get anything said.  "I don't want this to be over," she said in a low voice.  "Whatever it is."

"Over?" he said, passing close by her to get to the door.  "You never even let it start."

For a second Elizabeth was too numb to react, until he'd leaned over and kissed her hastily near her mouth.  Then she started fuming at that last sentence and, at the same time, regardless of anger and estrangement and fear, turned her lips to seek his.

He drew back.  Of course, she thought, of _course_ he wants to blame me and he wants an excuse to keep from ever getting close to anyone and he _kissed _me, and now – "You'll be a good chief, Lizzie," he said, half in mocking condescension and half deadly serious.  "Knock yourself out."

Before Elizabeth had found her voice he was gone, and she spluttered a few curse words at the closed door before her anger faded and left her feeling, almost, like crying.  Taking a look around at the barren surroundings, she made her way over to the desk and sat behind it, as if to experiment; to figure out how life would look from this new angle.

Pretty good, she decided.

(But it would have been better if Robert were in it.)

She laughed at herself, a little, and then a flash of color caught her eye from inside the top desk drawer, which Robert had left open a crack.  An earthy orange.  She pulled the drawer open further and found a book of poetry.  He must have forgotten it.  

Elizabeth examined the small paperback curiously.  What on earth was Rocket Romano doing with a volume of Pablo Neruda in his office?  The man had secrets certainly, but she certainly never imagined quite such a sensitive side to her onetime antagonist.

Almost unconsciously she opened it, thinking to dip into the volume, to see what kind of taste he had.  She'd heard of Neruda, of course, but rarely had enough spare time to educate herself in the ways of contemporary poetry.  Instead she saw the front cover, with its scrawled inscription.

"My God," she murmured to herself with a broad smile, seeing her name and then the inscription – "best wishes" – what could that mean? – a parting gift? – and then the date.

It was from her birthday.

She realized several things at that moment.  The first was that he might still be around, and the second was that she was going to go look for him even if he'd left.  As she hurried out the door, she nearly bumped into Shirley and gasped, "Did Romano leave?"

Shirley frowned in contemplation.  "He was talking to Weaver at the desk a minute ago."

Elizabeth thanked her, but when she checked at the surgery reception desk it was deserted.  Neither Weaver nor Romano was anywhere to be found.  "Damn," she muttered, switching directions and walking at an undignified pace towards the elevators to get to the parking lot.

By the time she got there, she was desperately impatient, and she fairly flew out of the elevator and towards the spot where Romano had been parked.  

"Robert!" she called when she spotted him fiddling with the keys.  Her voice echoed in the lot, and he jumped and stared at her as she forced herself to walk in a reasonable, adult fashion over to him. 

"Lizzie.  Couldn't let me leave?" he flirted lightheartedly.

She was still holding the book.  "I found this."

His face changed.  "I left that?"

"You didn't mean to?"

"I was about to get rid of that when you – well, never mind.  No.  I didn't mean to leave it.  It was leftover from a long time ago anyway."

"From that day you were going to take me to dinner," she said softly.

"That's right."  Robert's jaw was clenched so tightly he looked like he would burst a vein.  Gesturing impatiently to his car, he said, "Well, I'm not taking it back now.  I hope you enjoy it."  He threw the last sentence at her with almost vicious sarcasm.

"Robert," she protested as he slid into the front seat, about to close the door.

Closing his eyes in resignation, he stopped moving exactly where he was and said, "Yeah?"

"Can I… have a ride home?"

He rolled his tongue inside his lip, pretending to consider this; but she could see in his eyes that all of this had been decided in spite of himself a long time ago.  Then he jerked his chin in the direction of the passenger seat and said gruffly, his jaw set, "Door's unlocked."

Well, she'd take what she could get in the way of politeness, because that look told her everything she needed to know.  Hiding a smile of pure, premature happiness, she went around to the passenger side and got in, snapping the seat belt emphatically in so that the metallic click reverberated in the grim silence.  Robert maneuvered the Jag out of a tight parking space, backing out rather more carefully than she'd expected him to drive, without directing a word or a look in Elizabeth's direction.

The minute that it took to back out felt like twenty.  Elizabeth breathed a sigh of relief when they were clear of the other cars, as if being free on the open road could literally make things more open between them.  Only when they were completely out of the space and about to start driving out to the street did they hear the squeal of tires coming around the corner and see a Mercedes convertible driving rapidly straight towards them.


	20. Knocking on Heaven's Door

A/N:  Title from "Almost Paradise" by Ann Wilson and Mike Reno.  Song lyrics from Goo-Goo Dolls' "Iris" (thanks to the Lounge for providing them).  And, thanks to "Moi" for the last-minute beta-read of this monstrously long chapter.  

I also owe a lot of the plot and a little of the dialogue below to the corresponding canon timeline, but that will become pretty obvious.

Anyway, this is the last chapter.  Thank you all so much for your reviews and encouragement along the way!     

**Chapter 20.****  Knocking on Heaven's Door**

Mark woke in the middle of the night feeling very cold.

Despite aching muscles he turned over on his other side, reaching for Susan on the other side of the bed.  His hands slid over flat blankets and found nothing.

She was supposed to be here till morning – she had to go to work at seven.  But the clock next to his bed said it was only 2:15 AM.  Mark found himself irrationally panicked and forced himself to make the effort to get out of bed, pull on the bathrobe he had hanging on the bathroom door, and walk downstairs, clumsy with pain.

As he rounded the landing he heard a small noise coming from the family room, and stopped.  Listening more closely, he thought he heard a sniffle.

He tiptoed down the rest of the way, leaning heavily on the railing.  The house still felt very cold, and every step sent a chill through his bare feet from the wood floor.

Another sniffle echoed in the silent house as he slipped over to the entryway of the den and peered inside.

It was dark, but he could make out a shape huddled on the side of the couch, against the arms, and now he could easily hear the muffled sounds of Susan's quiet crying.  As his eyes adjusted, he made out the shape of a box of tissues that she wasn't using, and saw that her head was buried in her two hands.

He thought maybe he should go back upstairs.  She hadn't wanted him to see this for some reason; she'd taken care to wait till he was sleeping, and then to retreat down here where he couldn't see or hear her.

But then he watched her take a deep shaky breath as if to calm herself, and then succumb to a hoarse little sob, and he realized that he couldn't leave her down here by herself.  

Careful to be quiet, he stole across the room to take a seat next to her and touch her back.  Susan started and lifted her face – she hadn't even noticed his approach, and her eyes were wide and held a glassy reflection of the streetlights trickling into the window.  "Hi –" she whispered, trying to act casual in the darkness.

Tenderly he smoothed her hair away from her face and asked softly, "What is it?"

She shook her head helplessly and leaned in to sink against his chest.

"Is it Chloe?"

"No, it's… nothing."  Mark could barely hear her voice as she spoke against his robe.

"You don't have to hide," he said, kissing the top of her head.  "If you're sad, I mean."

She sat up, away from him, and wiped her face desperately.  "I talked to Elizabeth today," she said.  "She's worried about you, Mark.  We're worried."

He frowned and said, "I just got mixed up, because I was so sleepy.  I wasn't confused once I had woken up.  It wasn't a big deal."

There was a long, aching silence.  Susan wasn't stupid, Mark reminded himself.  They were both doctors.  They knew exactly what was going on.

He corrected himself.  "Listen, we knew this was going to happen.  The treatment is buying me time, but it couldn't work forever."

She still didn't answer.  Mark realized something else.

"Hey," he said gently.   "She told you I thought we were still together?"

Susan nodded, leaning forward and clasping her hands contemplatively on her lap.  Mark tried to meet her gaze, but she was staring straight ahead.  Then he reached out to touch her shoulder, but withdrew his hand without brushing her skin, stymied.  He took a long time to speak, and the words came slowly.  "When you left," he said, "when you got on that train to Arizona, you took everything."

"Mark—" she started, looking down and shaking her head.

"—No, listen," he said.  "My whole life was over and everything after that day was – was – disconnected from who I'd been before.  I got used to it, you know?  This idea that _you _were gone and everything would get better, but it would never be the same.  It broke my heart but I made myself face it."

He shrugged.

"And then you came back.  Sometimes it seems like I made all this up.  A pretty dream before dying, a happy ending."

Mark saw that she was looking at him out of the corner of her eyes and grew quieter.  "I've always loved you," he said softly.  "You have to know that."

Susan let him pull her gently backwards against his chest and wrap her in his arms.  "I do," she said.  "I know."  Her head nestled back into the hollow just next to his shoulder.  "Mark?"

"Yeah?"

She hesitated.  "How much time do they think you have?"

He tightened his hold on her.  "Not enough."

Her body shook as if racked with rebellion for a moment, and then she sighed and they were still.  

After a moment when he heard a leftover sniff, Mark reached over to hand her a tissue from the box.  Susan stood up to throw the used tissue away and then smiled at him.  "How about some breakfast?"

"It's 2:15," he protested.

"Late-night snack, then," she said, bending to kiss his ear.  "Where's your sense of romance?  Eating in dark, quiet houses is sexy."

"Hey, whatever floats your boat," he answered, chasing her lips to kiss her again.

Susan giggled and lifted him lightly to his feet, gracefully enough that Mark almost forgot that he needed her help.  Drawing his robe tightly around him to protect against the chill air of the house, he sat at the breakfast table while she rummaged in the fridge.

"Hmm," she said, pushing jars aside to search with reckless abandon, and cataloguing her finds sarcastically.  "Pickles… milk… weird shrunken grapes that you should've thrown away like a year ago… when was the last time you went shopping?"

He made a face.  "Last week?  Or… the week before?"

"Man.  Okay.  I would make you something, but you don't even have any eggs!" she sighed.  "Cereal and milk?"

"Now that's sexy," he joked.

Susan slid a bowl in front of him filled to heaping with Cheerios and milk and kissed him lingeringly.  "How's that for sexy?" she drawled with a grin before sitting down with her own cereal.

He twirled the fingers of one hand around hers.  "Try it again and maybe I can answer."

She laughed and leaned over the table to kiss him again.

The milk was room temperature before they finally got around to eating. 

~

The ceiling was white.

Romano registered the whiteness of it first as he tried to open his eyes against a wave of painful sleepiness.  His ceiling at home wasn't like that.

Behind his eyelids a face took shape, Elizabeth's.  "Lizzie?" he heard himself mumbling.

"Did you say something, Dr. Romano?" he heard a cheerful voice ask.  Slight Spanish accent.  Not Elizabeth.

He opened his eyes, hoping that whoever it was hadn't heard what he'd said.  There were metal bars lining each side of his bed, and the room he'd woken up in was painted a sickly green, with tiles to match.  And a woman in a crisp nurse's uniform was rummaging around in the cabinet.

"Ugh," he muttered, "I'm at _County_!"

The nurse laughed and said, "You sure are," and he recognized who it was.

"Chuny, right?" he muttered.

She closed the cabinet and turned to smile at him, one hand on her hip.  "Good to see you don't have amnesia," she informed him.  "Do you remember what happened?"

"Ummm…"  He closed his eyes.  Elizabeth's face, worried, peering out at him from a haze of returning consciousness – his confused question, "How did you get here?" – her unconscious scolding, "You didn't wear a seat belt!" – blood on her hands, coming from his scalp – that med student Gallant, running out to help Elizabeth with the passengers in the other car.  "Car accident?" he muttered, gingerly lifting his hand to feel the cut at the side of his head.

"You have a mild concussion," Chuny said.  "We kept you overnight for observation.  Dr. Corday said you lost consciousness."

"For about a millisecond," he retorted.  "Where's Weaver?  I want to get out of here as quickly as possible.  She owes me a favor."

"Well, she's not here today," Chuny said, still so cheerful it really enraged him.  "Want some breakfast?"

"No," he said shortly.

"You need your food if you're going to get better," she sing-songed.

"You aren't tricking me into eating whatever it is that we call 'food' around here," he said.

"You're not a very good patient, are you?"

"I never need to be a patient.  I don't get hurt."  He peered outside suspiciously.  "How many of you are outside dancing in glee over this?" he demanded.

"Hmmm…"  She counted on her fingers jokingly.  "Seven I think.  But not Dr. Corday," she added with an impish look.  "Sorry."

"All right, if Weaver's not around, send in that quiet kid," he directed her, ignoring the dig about Elizabeth.  Nurses always thought they knew so goddamn much about people.  He had no idea how Elizabeth had gotten in his car anyway; the last thing he remembered was leaving her in his office.  He'd stood outside the door for one second, resisting the urge to slip back into the room and slide his arms around her neck and kiss her; and then he'd left for the parking lot.  Hadn't he?

"The quiet one?" Chuny was saying.  "That could be any med student ever to walk this hallway."

"_Gallant_," he said, exasperated.

"I'll see if he's around," Chuny said as she sailed away, leaving him alone to wonder about Elizabeth.

As Romano flopped backwards onto the pillow, he realized it was basically a brick wrapped in a pillowcase.  Well, he was starting to have a little more sympathy for the patients who had to be treated here.  Why hadn't he sprung for decent pillows when the budget talks came around last year?  And where the hell were all the doctors, anyway?

He was eyeing the call button next to his bed when the door opened and Chuny poked her head in.  "I was wrong," she said with another knowing grin.  "Dr. Corday _is _here." 

Romano had looked up warily when the door opened, but he relaxed when he saw Elizabeth slip in past Chuny, who quickly withdrew.  "Come to bust me out of this joint?" he kidded her tiredly.

"No, a doctor has to sign you out before you can go home," she reproached him lightheartedly, sitting down in a chair next to his bed.  "You wouldn't want to go home without making sure you're all right."

"What about… what are those three letters?  … oh yeah, _AMA_?" he asked grouchily.  "Give me the papers, I'll sign all the forms, and no one gets sued."

"Oh, stop complaining, at least you got to sleep," she said.  "I've been up since six yesterday morning and I just finished a ten-hour procedure.  That man who hit us was driving his wife in to have her baby, so she went up to OB and I had to remove his spleen _and _patch up the crushed bones in both his legs.  Try that on for size."

"You win," he conceded.  "So you're just here to bask in your victory then?"

"No, of course not."  She opened her suitcase and took out a big brown bag.  "I have contraband.  How does Starbucks sound to you?"

"Ah, my knight in shining armor.  Please say there's some decent coffee hidden in that bag."

"I wouldn't try to talk to you in the morning without giving you your caffeine first."  She pulled out two strange, skinny little black cans and handed him one.    

Romano examined it with a skeptical frown.  "What the hell is this?"

"Read the label."

"Starbucks… double shot… espresso," he read mockingly.  "Well, I guess anything's better than the slop they tried to give me before you got here."

"Here," she said, "blueberry scone."

"Thanks," he said.  Then, taking a bite of the dry tasteless pastry, "What did they do, leave this out in the sun for three days to dry?"

"At least it's food," she said.

"Food?  I think this is a weapon," he said, testing the rock-hard scone with the strength of his hands.  "To bludgeon people with."

"Oh, shut up and eat," she said crossly.

"Keep practising that witty repartée and you might actually have a chance on a second-grade playground."

Giving up, Elizabeth opened her own can of whatever the stuff was and drained it in one gulp.  "I'm terribly tired," she explained with a sheepish little smile.

"What're you sticking around this dump for, then?"

She gave him a look.

"Could it be me?" he said in feigned surprise.

"Not if you keep this up."

"Lizzie, I'm wearing a gown that doesn't fasten in the back.  That isn't doing much to sweeten my mood."  He took a taste of the canned espresso.  "This isn't bad, though."

Elizabeth reached over to take the scone he was still holding.  "If you aren't going to finish this…"

"Are you sure you want that?" he asked.  "Because I have serious doubts that it's even edible."

She paused just as she'd been about to take a big bite out of his scone and said in a sultry voice, "Do I strike you as a woman who doesn't know what she wants?"

He chuckled as he drained his espresso.  "Lizzie, I would never insinuate such a thing."

Elizabeth smiled broadly.  "Good."

~

At seven in the morning Susan got Mark back up to his bed, after a night spent eating and then drinking several cups each of tea.  Then she left, not without a few twinges of worry, to go to work.  When she got there, she was assaulted by the normality of it all, after a night that had overwhelmed her with its sad beauty.  She was trembling with exhaustion as she emerged from the lounge and prepared herself for twelve hours of drudgery.

Carter stomped out and came over to her as she checked the board, visibly seething with anger over something.  "Romano wants you in curtain three," he said with a roll of his eyes.

"I thought Romano's last day was yesterday."

"Not as a doctor," Carter said with a significant smile.  "As a _patient_.  He bumped his little bald head, slow-moving MVA."

"Oooh," Susan said.  "Everyone must be getting a kick out of that."

"Yeah, we made him gown up and everything.  He's not happy about being here," Carter said.  "I think the head injury made him grumpier than usual."

"Is that possible?"

"You wouldn't think so."

"Well, I won't keep his Highness waiting," Susan said, taking the chart from Carter.

"Wait," Carter said.  "Did you hear how it happened?"

"You just told me.  Slow-moving MVA."

"No, there's more," he said with a significant grin.  "He was on his way out of the parking lot, with Dr. Corday in the passenger seat."

"_Elizabeth _Corday?"

"That's the one."

"Oh, my God."

"I know.  They were going home together."

"Oh, my God."

"Yeah.  Oh my God is right."  Carter shook his head.  "Of all the guys to have a rebound fling with, she picks _him_."

"I can't believe I didn't see this one coming," Susan said.  "I'm usually psychic about these things."

"Huh," he said with a hint of bitterness.  "Not always."

"Oh, I know what you're thinking.  Don't worry," she sallied, "Abby will come around."

Carter blushed like a kid, and Susan headed towards curtain 3 feeling quite touched over it.  Her amusement only increased as she paused outside the door of curtain 3 and heard Elizabeth's voice ring out.  "He was just trying to help, Robert."

"Trying being the operative word.  He was the joke of the OR when he got here.  Why do you think Anspaugh assigned Peter Benton to teach him?"

"I really couldn't say."

"Revenge for Benton's attitude, that's why.  He got stuck with the student who would spill all the urine samples and faint during all the traumas."

"Really, I think he's all right now," Elizabeth said, but she was audibly stifling a laugh.

Susan chose this point to make her entrance.  Pushing the door open she deadpanned, "Yeah, he hasn't fainted in at _least _a week."

"Lewis."  His voice was almost mild.  "What a sight for sore eyes."  Before she could get offended he added, "I was beginning to think all the competent doctors had flown the nest."

"Hey, I'm still here," Elizabeth protested lightly.

"Fat lot of good it's doing me," he answered.  "Susan, how fast can you get this done?  I'd been counting on being out of this godforsaken place by today."

"Just call me Speedy Susan," she answered with a grin.

"Well!"  Elizabeth stood up and teased, "I'll leave you two alone."

Romano feigned an ashamed face.

"I have to make a few phone calls," Elizabeth added.

On her way out she touched Susan's arm in an unusual gesture for Elizabeth and murmured, "See you later, Susan."

Left alone, Romano twisted his lips in a wry little smile as Susan crossed her arms and grinned mischievously at him.  "Looks like I'm your doctor this morning."

"Don't enjoy this too much," he told her.

"Well, how much is too much?" she asked, bringing over a cart and sitting by the injured side of his head.  The cut had been sutured, fairly neatly.

Romano winced as she touched the edges of the sutures with gloved fingers.  "Hey."

"Baby."

He glared, but he was smiling.

"So," Susan segued unsubtly.  "You and Elizabeth."

"It's not what everyone is saying.  She needed a ride home."

"Uh-huh."

"Look, whatever.  Those nurses really can't be dissuaded, once they think there's something to gossip about."

"Besides."  She made her voice light.  "You totally wish it were true."

"No, I totally don't," he mocked her.  "She asked for a ride."

"Mm-hm."

"Stop doing that."

Susan put her gloves on with deliberate slowness.  "You know, there's this story I like to tell Mark whenever…" (Whenever he's in pain and I want to make him laugh.)  "Whenever we talk about the old times when we were residents."  She gave him a wicked little look.  "Mark and I ran into each other on the subway and went to work together in the morning.  Then we met Carter while we were on the El.  Three hours later, people started congratulating us on our new relationship.  And now," she singsonged, "we're in love."

"You're not really comparing me to Mark Greene, are you?" he demanded, insulted.

"Watch what you say about my boyfriend!" she exclaimed.  "I have the power to get you admitted for another twenty-four hours, and I'm not afraid to use it."

He smirked.  "Good point.  …Want a scone?"

"Bribery.  I like it!" she said.  Then, overcome by fatigue after her sleepless night, she yawned.

Romano's sharp gaze raked over her face.  "You look like you haven't slept in weeks."

"I feel that way," she admitted.

"Is it Greene?"

Susan didn't answer, and Romano stared her down with an almost sympathetic look in his eyes.  "He's lucky to have you," he flirted finally.

"Oh, save it for Elizabeth," she grinned.  "Actually, I'm going to have to get you up to CT.  Oh, don't pout, it doesn't hurt.  After that if it's clear, you can go.  Happy now?"

"So happy I could jump off the roof," he muttered.

"Chin up, little trooper," she teased as she got up to leave.

He paused and then lifted his hand to wave and said seriously, "You, too."

Susan closed the door, collected herself – don't think of Mark, don't think of him – and went to find Chuny, who was in triage.

"Who else is on?" she asked.

"Abby's around somewhere," Chuny answered.  "Did you get any dirt on Romano?"

"Not really.  But I do have to get him a CT and quickly, or he'll really –"  Susan stopped as she caught a good glimpse of the crowd of would-be patients waiting in chairs.  "Oh my God," she said, for what felt like the hundredth time that morning.

Chuny stared in the same general direction, trying to see what Susan was looking at.  "What?"

Susan looked closer.  There was a middle-aged couple sitting nearby, each cradling a small child.  And even from here, she could see what was worrying the parents on their children's faces.  "Damn…" she said.

"What is it?"

Susan found herself balking; it couldn't really be what it looked like.  "How long has that family been here?"

"An hour at least."

She nodded and said slowly, her mind still processing, "Get Romano up to radiology, okay?"

Chuny groaned.  "Can't you make Abby do it?"  

"Don't worry, he's had his coffee, now he's fine," Susan said.  After Chuny left, she was about to go see them when Elizabeth flew by and said, "We have a multiple-victim MVA coming in!"

Susan grabbed the arm of the nearest doctor she could find – Luka, who was standing at the desk – and murmured in a low voice, "Luka, can you get the family in chairs?"

"We have a trauma coming in."

"This is important," Susan insisted.  "An infectious disease."

"What is it?"

She shook her head.  "Don't know.  But from the looks of it – could be smallpox."

Luka frowned, startled.  "No it couldn't."

"Just check them out," Susan called and then went to the ambulance bay to help Elizabeth.

~

Mark woke seized by fear, from nightmares so gripping that he trembled in his bed.  He spoke thickly, in a voice crusted by sleep – "Susan?  Susan?"

She wasn't there.

He sat up and looked around, panicked.  "Susan," he called more urgently, but the room was empty.

The motion of sitting had engulfed his body in pain and he lay back down, dizzy and moaning.  Above him the ceiling stretched like white infinity; his vision was blurry and narrow, all his senses on fire.  Where was Susan?

Slowly the answer came to him.  The hospital.

He reached blindly next to him and almost knocked over the phone before managing to grip it in a weakened hand.  The number was the first speed dial.

While the line rang and rang and rang, he tried to fight back against the pain that seemed to have grown exponentially since yesterday.  "Please, please," he murmured to no one.

Finally someone picked up, but all he could hear was the roar of what seemed hundreds of voices on the other end.  Then a shout: "Hello?"

"Jerry?" he asked weakly.

"Hello?  Hello?"

Mark repeated Jerry's name.

"I can't hear you," Jerry shouted.  "Hold on a second."

After a moment another line picked up, and Jerry said more quietly, "Sorry, I had to move to another room.  Who is this?"

"It's Mark Greene," he managed to say.  "What's going on?"

"There's a rioting crowd trying to ram open the doors and escape the ER," Jerry answered pleasantly.  "Did you want to talk to Dr. Lewis?"

"Yeah."  He was slowly calming, realizing where he was, what had frightened him.  Just a dream.  Nothing real.

"I'll see if I can find her.  Hold on."

Mark waited, too nervous to fall back asleep despite his exhaustion, for five minutes before Susan picked up.  "Mark?" she said, her voice soft.  "How are you?"

"I don't know…" he hedged, searching for words.

"Are you all right?  You just wake up?" she said.

"I need you," he blurted.  "I'm afraid.  I don't want to be alone."

"Do you feel worse?" she asked.  "Is that what it is?"

"I don't know, I don't know," Mark fretted.  "I know I sound – but –"  He stopped to catch his breath.  "Please come home."

She sighed, shakily.  "I can't."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm sorry.  I would, I promise you.  The hospital's been locked down, we had two cases of something that looks like smallpox this morning and the ER is contaminated.  No one's allowed to leave yet."

"Smallpox?" he repeated, confused.  "But…"

"I know, it's bizarre.  But it's definitely something infectious; they've got evenly spaced pustules, in the same stage of development, with – well, never mind.  It's just that we all need to be safe."

"Are you okay?"

"Oh, me, yeah, I'm fine.  I wasn't really in contact with them.  Kovac and Abby are in isolation treating them, though."  She paused and spoke the next words with some difficulty.  "It might be time to get you to a hospital."

"No!" he said vehemently.  "I don't want to be there.  I don't want to die in the hospital."

"Okay, okay, don't worry," she said soothingly, "you can stay at home.  Don't worry."  A few moments passed and when Susan spoke again her voice was carefully, glassily smooth.  "I'll send Chloe and Suzie over, okay?"

"Okay.  Be careful," he added.

"I will.  And I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Yeah," he said.

They both stayed.  Mark didn't want to hang up, unwilling to lose the sound of her voice.  "I love you," he said after a long time.

"I love you too," she said.  "Don't be afraid.  I promise you won't be alone."

~

Gallant entered Romano's room hurriedly, as the yelling from the mysteriously large crowd outside grew louder.  "Dr. Romano?" he said.  

Romano had been dozing, but he snapped to attention, waking quickly and completely as always.  "Yeah," he answered curtly, craning his neck to see what was going on outside to make everyone so loud.

"Your CT is clear."

"Let me see."  He got up from his bed, took the paper from Gallant's hand and put it up on a board.  "Yeah, okay."

"You can be discharged now, but you can't go anywhere."

"What?" he said.

Gallant shrugged.  "Smallpox."

He'd heard whisperings of this, but hadn't paid much attention – he'd thought smallpox eradicated fifty years ago.  "Christ," he muttered.  "Is that why they're making so much noise out there?"

"That's right."

"Well, can't you quiet them down, or are you all too busy doing _absolutely nothing_?" he demanded.

Gallant straightened.  "There's an infectious disease airborne in this place.  Do you really blame them for being scared?"

He was developing a backbone.  Romano approved.  "So how long is this going to last?" he asked.

"We don't know."

"Great, that's just perfect.  Man, am I glad Weaver inherited my job.  She's got her work cut out for her."  He examined the kid, who seemed faintly amused.  "So is the consensus that she's an improvement over me?"

"_I_ think she is, sir.  Most people can't make up their minds."

Romano laughed at that one and Gallant exited with a nod.  He got dressed and then stood at the doorway, observing the angry rioting with a detached kind of curiosity.  They were really acting like animals out there.  He wasn't crazy about the idea of hanging out too near the crowd of the unwashed masses.

Carter was yelling something stupid into a megaphone, tactful diplomatic nonsense, as Romano picked his way through, shoving people if he had to, and made his way to the lounge.

He opened the door to near emptiness and sighed in relief, muttering "Jesus" to himself.

A sniff took him by surprise.  He looked around and finally noticed Susan sitting at the table by herself.  There were lots of Kleenex crumpled around.  He came closer, and Susan said quietly, "Hey, Robert."

"So this plague is really heartbreaking, huh?" he said when he saw she was crying.  "Kinda like _Love Story_.  Gets me every time."

She didn't answer.  Romano crossed over to search the fridge for anything edible.  "Nothing," he muttered to himself.  "They must've raided it already to calm the nutcases out there."

"It took forever to get supplies down here," Susan explained.

He sat down in a chair near her.  "You upset about Greene?" he asked.

She looked up as if surprised, to hear his voice was simple and straightforward.  "He called me.  He wanted me to go home and stay with him."

"And you can't," he filled in for her.

"Right."

"Is he… in danger?"

"He seemed like _he _thought he was," Susan said.  "I don't know, he – he gets overexcited sometimes, because he's sick; he goes into panics, especially when he's feverish.  Maybe he is about to go, I don't know."

Romano looked down, waiting for her to talk it out, and felt suffocated.  He wasn't used to this whole sympathy and friendship bit.  Lewis had snuck into his good graces when he wasn't looking.

"I don't know," Susan repeated in a dull voice.  "I just don't want him to die before I can see him."

After that they didn't speak.  Romano leaned back, his eyes closed although he wasn't tired.  She didn't seem to mind his presence.  A long time passed, and their silence insulated them against the noise of chaos and rioting outside.  Glass broke somewhere far away, and Susan just stared out the window.

The day passed.  Susan dialed the phone once and got no answer.  The second time, she seemed to be talking to someone other than Mark, and heard news that made her very still and sad after she hung up the phone.  In the times between, their helpless waiting felt like a vigil.

In a golden afternoon, with the crowd quieter outside, Carter opened the door to the lounge.  It was the first time anyone had disturbed them all day.  "Hey Susan," he said, his voice gentle.  "We've got everything under control now.  If we give people vaccines, the Health Department says they can go."

"That's it?"

"Well, Luka and Abby have to stay here for two weeks because they treated the kids for so long.  Chen and Pratt have fevers, so they're also in quarantine for two weeks.  But we're all scot-free, _and _we get two weeks' vacation."

Susan smiled a little.  "Could go to the Bahamas."

"If we could afford it," Carter sighed.

"Just wait till you're an attending," Susan teased him.  "Then you might sneak up above the poverty line.  Believe me, I've been there."

"Me too," Romano offered cheerfully.  "I was only a resident for _three_ years, though."

Carter glared.

"Think I could get that vaccine?" Romano asked innocently.

"If it means we can get rid of you," Susan said with a smile.  She turned to Carter and said quietly, "Do you still need me here?"

Carter searched her eyes.  "Is it Mark?"

Susan nodded.

"Then go," Carter said, his voice cracking.

He brought Romano out to the hallway where Gallant was already administering injections, quickly poked Romano with what seemed like a dozen needles in the same spot, and bid him godspeed.

Before he could go, Carter called, "Oh, and Dr. Romano?"

"Yeah."

Carter seemed amused.  "Elizabeth called down to leave you a message.  She says come up to surgery before you leave.  And she seemed adamant."

"Why do I get the feeling the universe doesn't want me to get the hell out of this place like I'd wanted?" he asked the ceiling as he switched directions towards the elevator.

~

Elizabeth emerged from her splenectomy on the MVA, feeling exhausted.  Thank God, nothing _could _come along now; the hospital must have been almost evacuated by now.

"I'm going to my office," she told Shirley.  "Can you take our splenectomy out?  And let me know when the choppers come to take my diabetic."

Shirley nodded, and Elizabeth headed to her office, feeling as if at any step her legs would give way beneath her.  She'd been up since dawn yesterday morning, when she'd gotten up to visit Mark, but it felt like years ago.  They'd been interrupted by a call from Anspaugh while they were doing the MVA, to tell them the hospital was being evacuated because of _smallpox_.  Of all the ridiculous things to happen.  She'd been worried about Robert, but it turned out to be Chen and that young Pratt who were showing signs of fever.

As Elizabeth approached her office she realized that it was no longer hers; she'd packed up all her things yesterday, ready to be moved over to Romano's old office.  She wondered if Robert had gotten her message – or, more importantly, if he had heeded it.  But her office was empty.

In a last hopeful little impulse, she checked her new office, though the light was off.  At the threshold of the open door she paused, and saw that Romano was there.  He was standing by the window and drinking coffee from her "I Love Mommy" mug, a Christmas present from Ella and Mark this past year.  His back was to her, and he didn't seem to hear her arrive.  She could see the stitches from last night on the side of his head.

She stayed at the doorway and said, "You got my message?"

"Yeah," he said to the window.  He was close enough that his breath might fog up the glass.  Beyond his face, she could see that it was twilight in the city; everywhere else, the city was lit artificially.  But inside, they were wrapped together in the dark.

"What's the latest story with the smallpox?"

"It's not smallpox, it's monkeypox, but they gave us a smallpox vaccine and let us go.  Everyone but Chen, Pratt, Kovac and Lockhart.  Quarantined for two weeks, which means County's closed, which means _you _get a nice vacation."

Kovac and Lockhart.  _There_ was enough material for a good story, Elizabeth thought.  "What about the two little ones?"

"The girl died.  The boy's okay.  So far."  He took another sip of coffee.  "Are you leaving now?"

"Not quite.  I have to take care of getting a few patients to Saint Rafe's, and then I can go."  She paused.

Slowly he turned towards her and looked contemplatively at her.

Elizabeth crossed over to stand slightly behind him and said, "How's your head?"

He ducked away.  "Fine."

Taking the hint, she backed away and stood at the other side of the room.  "I was worried there for a second, yesterday.  You went unconscious, and then when you woke up you tried to get out of the car and help me with the two in the other car."

"Instinct," he said with dull amusement.

"They had to pull you away from the trauma room to get your head looked at," Elizabeth said.

"Yeah, I remember.  Don't remember much of how we got there though.  Didn't I leave you inside last night?"

"At first you did," she said.  "Then I came back out and asked for a ride home."

His exhalation hissed softly in the expansive silence.  After awhile he said, "Why?"

"Because I'm afraid to let you leave," she said, determined not to let him slip through her fingers.  "If I had let you go last night, you would have walked away and never gotten in touch again."

His voice was not unkind.  "Probably so."

"Leaving County doesn't have to mean leaving people that you… are… friends with," she said, finishing lamely.

"I _need _that," he said suddenly, his voice quietly vehement, almost frightening her.  "I can't stick around here anymore."

"Why?"

"Because.  Every time I see you all the other things I thought I wanted, everything else that I have, all the other people in the world stop existing."

"You're leaving because of me?" she said, feeling empty and hurt.

"I think I'd been staying because of you."  His voice dipped so low and soft that it almost hurt her.  "Scratch that, I know I was."

Elizabeth waited for a long, long time.  Romano didn't move.  Finally she said, "You waited five years, and now you won't give this a chance."

"What do you think I've been doing for the last four months?" he snapped.

"Another chance, then," she said in a low voice.  "You brought me food when Ella was sick and let me lean on you through the worst night of my life.  You told me the truth before Mark did, you make me feel alive when everything else is too dreary to matter.  You know me, you know my worst side, and I know the best side of you."

"There's not much of that," he said, finally facing her and standing with his hands in his pockets, wary.

"There's enough."  She felt him waver and then resist again and said softly, "What are you thinking, Robert?  I can't tell."

"After all this time, I'm not an open book?"

She lifted her hands, weary.  "Not anymore."

"Ah."  He bent to pick up his coat where it had been thrown over her desk.  "I'm thinking it might be time to get going, now that I've obeyed orders and come up here.  For a couple of hours, I might add."

"You don't trust me," she guessed.

"I don't have any reason to."

"You're afraid—"

"Because I'm in lovewith you," he exploded, and Elizabeth's breath left her body in one rush, leaving her shaky and exhilarated and scared to death.  He watched her carefully, and his voice was dry and brittle, but as shaky as she felt.  "Fuck," he muttered.

"Robert—"

"That wasn't what I'd meant to say."

"Well…"

"Yeah."

"You said it."

He laughed to himself in scorn; she wasn't sure what he was scornful of.  Probably himself.

"Elizabeth?"

"What is it?" she gasped, as her office door opened behind her.

Shirley took in the scene with curious eyes, Elizabeth trembling on the couch and Romano staring at her as if he could never look away, and then said, just soon enough that the pause didn't grow unbearably awkward, "Chopper's on its way."

Elizabeth stood up, feeling as if she had been caught in something illegitimate.  She murmured to Robert, "I have to…"

"Yeah, I know," he muttered.

"Don't go _anywhere_."

"Where would I go?"

She turned to Shirley and said as composedly as possible, "How many did they say they'd take?"

"One."

"They need to take four."  Elizabeth considered this a moment.  "We'll send two now, since the chopper has room – but I'll let them know we're sending two more and they don't have a choice in the matter."

Romano's voice came from behind her.  "Taking charge.  I like that."

"I'll remember you said that," she said archly as she led Shirley out of the room.  Then, the moment they were clear of the door, she muttered, "They'd better not think we're really going to treat our patients in a contaminated hospital.  Honestly."  But in the back of her head she was thinking of Robert and that last thing he'd said – what did it mean, coming from _him_?

Shirley nodded and examined Elizabeth shrewdly.  Elizabeth said,  "What is it?"

"Nothing."  Shirley smiled to herself.  "Only I'm glad you waited till now to make up your mind about Dr. Romano."

"Why?" Elizabeth said, astonished.

"Because Dr. Edson would have won a load of money if you had, and I don't want that man winning anything."  Shirley shrugged.  "I didn't bet in it, but there was an office pool going, whether you'd date Dr. Romano to get your fellowship back."

"Good Lord, that's horrifying," Elizabeth gasped.

"I know.  I'm sorry."

"Well, it's not your fault."  She frowned as she thought this over further.  _Could _she have gotten her fellowship back by dating him…?  "My God," she muttered, "what am I _thinking_?  That man!"

As they rolled their septic diabetic towards the elevator, Shirley answered, "People _aren't_ usually thinking in times like this."

"I thought Mark over very carefully," Elizabeth said absently.  There was a pause as Shirley raised her brows, her point made, and then Elizabeth said, "Oh."

They laughed as Elizabeth wheeled her patient into the elevator.  Shirley stood back as the doors closed, and then the elevator started up towards the roof.

Elizabeth looked down at the patient, Monty, and ascertained that he was all right.  Then she closed her eyes, picturing Robert.  The deep-set, cryptic eyes; the low menacing brow; a smile never quite free of sarcasm or acidity.  Not a beautiful face, not a beautiful person.  But that didn't matter.

And he loved her.

She opened her eyes as the elevator bumped to a halt at the roof.  As the doors opened, she could already hear the chopper whirring above. 

~

Chloe was in the kitchen when Susan let herself in, with the key that Mark had given her a few weeks ago.  She leaned back from the oven when Susan came in.  "Hey Suze," she said in a stage whisper.  "I'm making pizza."

Susan was a little nervous.  "You're cooking?"

"Hey, I'm a good cook now," Chloe said.

No comment there.  Susan assented, out of laziness.

"But," Chloe finished with a grin, "I'm just heating up leftovers from last night."

"Oh, good," Susan said, relieved.  She'd never been fond of Chloe's "cooking."

"Have a little faith, Suze," Chloe reprimanded her lightly.

Suzie turned around from the table and waved at Susan.  "Hey Aunt Suzie," she said, "I'm making you a picture."

"Thank you, honey!  --Where's Chris?" Susan asked Chloe.

"Well, I sent her home because I knew you were staying here tonight."

"But what about Ella?" Susan said, looking around and seeing no child.

"Oh, she went down early," Chloe said.

"Chloe!" Susan exclaimed, irritated.  "She'll be up in the middle of the night if you let her sleep this early."

"_Sorry_, Suze.  God, calm down." 

Susan promptly calmed down, with a superhuman effort.  That was all you could do with Chloe.  "How is Mark?" she asked finally.

Chloe shook her head and shrugged.  "I don't know, I'm not a doctor.  He was asking for you, though."

"I'll go up in a second."  She went over to praise Suzie's Crayola picture of an unidentifiable four-legged green animal – apparently Susan had passed on her poor artisanship to her namesake – and then slipped upstairs.

Just as she was peeking in on Ella, to satisfy herself that the child was still alive and sleeping, she faintly heard Mark's voice ask hoarsely, "Susan?"

She stole out of Ella's room and down the hall to Mark's bedroom, whispering, "Hey."

His eyes were only half-open, she could see, and his lips pale.  He must be dehydrated – she should have reminded Suzie to give him plenty of fluids – and she could hear his attempts to breathe, from all the way across the room.  She tried to smile at him as she came over to the side of the bed.

He reached upwards aimlessly with his hands, so that she leaned down and kissed him softly.  His hand slid around her waist.  "Glad to see you don't have smallpox," he whispered.

"It turned out to be monkeypox," she said wryly, smiling at him though all she could think was that his lips were deadly dry.

He kept his hand on her waist as she stood up.  "Monkeypox?" he repeated blurrily.

"I don't know exactly what the difference is… but if monkeys get it, I really don't want it."

"Yeah, me either."  He nodded to the chair in the corner of his room and said, "Sit."

Susan pulled the chair close by him.  "You need to drink some water," she told him.  "Your lips are all chapped."

He took a plastic cup half-full of water from the nighttable by his bed, and the weight of it made his hand shake as he held it to his own lips, but he lifted his other hand to preclude Susan's aid.  Then he took her face and brought it down for another kiss.  "Better?"

"Wasn't so bad the first time," she said.

"Glad to hear it."

From the stairs, a voice sing-songed, "Anyone want pizza?"

Suzie dashed into the room and threw herself onto Susan, giving her a big tight hug.  "Meee," she yelled.

"What did you feed her?" Susan asked Chloe jokingly, as she entered the room balancing four plates of pizza.

"Just a brownie," Chloe joked back.

Susan glared.  "Not funny."

"I want a brownie," Suzie said obliviously.

Mark blew a kiss at her.  "Me too, Suzie," he said with a little smile.  "A big fudgy one.  With chocolate frosting on top."

"And sprinkles," Suzie said.

Susan took two plates from Chloe and balanced one on Mark's lap.  "Can you eat anything?" she asked him under her breath.

He shook his head just as subtly.  "Don't think so."

Susan put the plate on the nighttable and started devouring her own pizza, realizing for the first time that she hadn't eaten all day while stuck in lockdown.  Suzie jabbered through mouthfuls at no one in particular, and the three adults were quiet and indulging.  

When Susan's first slice was gone, she looked at Mark questioningly.  He laughed.  "Go ahead."

"Thanks."  She took his plate and started eating his pizza, too.  "God, I'm so hungry."

"I can tell," Chloe said expressively.

Below them, the front door slammed.  "That will be Rachel," Susan muttered.

"What time is it?" Mark said foggily.  "Did school just get out?"

"I'll go down and talk to her," Susan said.

She left Chloe and Suzie with Mark and went downstairs.  Rachel was slipping off her backpack, and jumped when Susan said her name.  "Oh, Susan," she said.  "You scared me."

"Sneaking in?" she said.  "Did you think Mark was too sick to notice you were late?"

"No, I just – I had a meeting.  Yearbook."

"You're on the yearbook staff," Susan repeated skeptically.

"Yeah," Rachel said, with aggravating wide-eyed innocence.

"Sure, and on Tuesdays you stay for the Just Say No club," Susan surmised under her breath.

Rachel didn't hear.  "What?"

"Nothing."  Susan came down a few more stairs.  "Your father isn't doing very well," she said quietly.

The girl's eyes dilated, but she maintained her stony face.  "Yeah, I know," she said with a sneer.  "Brain tumor."

"He told me today he doesn't want to go to the hospital," Susan said.  "He's getting ready."

Rachel hesitated.  "Ready for what?"

Susan didn't answer.

Rachel sighed.  "Does he know I'm late?"

"He's not clear on details."

She stalked upstairs and turned over her shoulder to say softly and vehemently, "Don't tell him anything."

"Wait a second," Susan said, catching Rachel's wrist as she brushed rudely by.

She shook Susan off.  "What?"

"He loves you and Ella more than anything else in this world," Susan said quietly.  "Do you understand?"  _He needs you to be his daughter.  Just for a few more days._

Heavy lids closed over Rachel's dishonest eyes.  When she opened her eyes after a long second, she was looking down.  "No," she said, her voice still sullen but barely audible now.  "I don't understand _why_."

She turned and fled up the stairs.  Susan called Chloe and Suzie in a whisper from the stairs, "Come and help me do the dishes, you two."

They came out as Rachel slipped in.  The door closed behind her, and Susan turned away.

Downstairs, Chloe said, "I would help you do the dishes, but Suzie has a sleepover at Georgina's house.  They're going to see _My Big Fat Greek Wedding _tomorrow in the movie theater."

"Right, right, I completely forgot," Susan said.  "Thanks so much for helping out today."  She turned to Suzie.  "Have fun tonight, honey."

Suzie wriggled in protest as Susan kissed her forehead goodnight.  "I want to stay with you," she whined.

Susan picked her up to give her a big hug, smiling over the little girl's head at her sister.  "I'll see you tomorrow," she said.  "Mark needs somebody to stay here tonight, okay?"

After wrinkling her nose and staring hard at Susan, Suzie suddenly demanded, "Are you going to have sex?"

"Suzie!" Chloe gasped, whisking her daughter out the door.  Suzie protested, something about "But Georgina told me…"

"I wish," Susan muttered aside to Chloe with a laugh.  Then she told Suzie, "Don't forget I bought Oreos, you can have some when you get home, okay?"

Chloe kissed Susan on the cheek.  "Call me if you need me," she said quietly.

Susan waved, putting on a cheerful face for Suzie, and shut the door, leaving herself alone in Mark's living room, which she had only begun to think of as hers.

Susan leaned back against the door, closing her eyes as tears gathered behind her lids.  She heard a creak and saw Rachel's slim shape at the top of the stairs.  She got down third steps and then suddenly bent over, her hands to her face.

When Rachel straightened, her eyes met Susan's in recognition.  She quickly hid her tears, and Susan wiped her own face.  By the time Rachel was all the way down the stairs, she had grown sullen again and said curtly, "He's asleep."

"Okay," Susan said softly.

When she got back upstairs, Mark was asleep again.  She checked his forehead; no fever; and sat down by his bed, feeling lost.  This morning, they had spoken of death as something certain, but not imminent.  Now it had already marked his face.  She hadn't been prepared for how fast the last descent might be.

She realized that things had managed to turn out exactly as she'd planned: a life with Chloe, with Suzie, and not Mark.  Exactly the direction she had chosen a long time ago – but she couldn't face a future without him now.  After all the other men who didn't matter, he was forever.  But only for a little while, and then someday she'd come to terms with solitude the way she had before.

Susan touched his hand, needing to feel him.  Something broke inside her.

"I can't do it," she said matter-of-factly, into the unhearing room. 

He stirred at the sound, but didn't awaken, and she bent her head without shedding tears.

~

The gurney made a loud noise as they wheeled it hurriedly out of the elevators.  Elizabeth looked down at Victor.  His face was pale, and his arm – what was left of it – was spurting blood despite the tourniquet.  Dried vomit around the mouth.

Footsteps skidded up to her, and sound echoed around her, refracted as through a prism.  "Is that that med student?" she heard a man's voice say.  And then a woman, "Oh my God…"

It was Chen and Pratt.  Elizabeth collected herself.  "He stepped into the chopper," she told them briskly, swallowing back her own nausea.  "I need one of you to go to my office and get Dr. Romano."

"Romano?" Pratt said skeptically.

"Yes, get him!" she said.  "Brennan needs surgery right away, we can't wait for ortho."

"Does he still have privileges?" Chen said.

"Do you see any other surgeons around here?" Elizabeth snapped.  "I don't think anyone's going to sue us for saving this boy's arm.  Go and get him, _now_."

"Too late, I'm here," said Robert's voice, never so welcome, as he dashed towards her already in the midst of tying on his own scrub cap.  "Scrub in and I'll start," he said, and then caught a good look at the sight before him.  "Jesus Christ," he muttered.

"Tail rotor," Elizabeth said.

"Horrifying."  He snapped back into himself.  "You have the arm?"

"On ice," she said, indicating the bloody severed appendage.

Victor's eyes fluttered open.  "Victor," she said urgently, "Can you hear me?"

"My arm…" he muttered.

"Don't worry, Rocket and I are going to reattach," she said.  "You're in the hospital, everything will be fine."

His face blanched with fear, and he went out again.

"Take him," Elizabeth told Romano as she dashed to the nearest sink.  "Pratt, go up to the roof and help Kovac with his patient; I left them up there alone.  And Chen, get that nurse from quarantine." 

She started washing her hands, and immediately heard footsteps behind her.  She turned to see Abby, her face white.  "What happened to Luka?" she gasped.

Elizabeth shook her head, startled.  "Nothing.  We were up on the roof and a med student stepped into the chopper rotors and lost his arm."

"Oh."  Abby exhaled, shaky.  "God.  I heard that someone got hurt up on the roof—"

"Someone did," Elizabeth said briefly.  "I sent Chen down to tell you, but I suppose rumors travel too fast even in an empty hospital.  Your Luka is fine, but he needs to have some sense talked into him fast," Elizabeth said irritably, recalling the quarrel they'd had up on the roof over whose patient would get into the chopper first.  "The man is a stubborn ass."

"You date Romano and you think _Luka _is a stubborn ass?" Abby said.

"Hey," Elizabeth protested, confused.  _She _wasn't even sure she was dating Romano, yet.

"I'm a nurse," Abby said.  "We know things."

Still bemused, Elizabeth asked, "Will you get a scrub cap and tie it on for me?  I'm in a hurry."

"Sure."  Abby got a cap – which was actually the old, plain light blue one that Peter used to wear – and stood on tiptoe to fasten it around Elizabeth's hair.  "Sorry, I didn't mean to keep you.  I was just worried about Luka."

Elizabeth lifted her eyebrows at the tone in her voice, but didn't comment except to remark, "You and he have two weeks together in quarantine, right?"

"Right."  Abby laughed dryly.  "Should be interesting, to say the least."

"Hey," Romano called over from the next room, through the window.  "Would you ladies mind cutting the blabbing short?  You're going to miss the spectacular save I've got going on here."

"If you're such a brilliant surgeon, you can save the arm all by yourself," Elizabeth retorted.

Abby finished tying the cap and laughed as Elizabeth started towards surgery.

"What?" Elizabeth asked.

"You and Romano."  Abby shook her head, wry.  "Match made in heaven."

~

By the time the ortho guys – well, a guy and a woman, both from Northwestern, who greeted Romano with recognition and deference once introduced – had shown up, it was fully nighttime, and Romano and Elizabeth were already finishing up with the kid's arm.

As Elizabeth stayed inside, Romano escorted his two new colleagues out to the ambulance with Victor and chatted lightly with them for a few minutes.  "I couldn't tell your work from a specialist's," Ramsey said, with Varshisky nodding along.

He knew this was true; he also knew that they said it to flatter him.  "Don't bother, I'm never gonna like you or anyone else who works for me," he said.  "I'll be in later this week."

Bewildered a little, they said clumsy good-byes and took off in the ambulance.  He turned back, squinting in the dark at the eerily unlit hospital.

When he got back inside through the employee entrance, he made his way over to the admit desk and his eyes immediately lit upon Elizabeth.  She was sitting in chairs, staring at an unopened bag of Lays, and her eyes drifted closed while he watched, only to have her muscles jerk her back upright and her eyes fly open.

He approached and leaned against the edge of the wall that jutted out next to the vending machines, waiting for her to see him.

When she did, the sleepiness disappeared, replaced by a nervous, hazy-eyed alertness.

"We did good today," he said.  "We saved the arm."

"Does it matter?  He still can't be a doctor."

"Lab work for the rest of his life," he said.  "I'd throw myself off the roof."

Elizabeth looked quickly up at him.  "I haven't eaten since this morning," she said after a moment, to explain the bag she was holding.  "I'm so hungry, but I don't even have the energy to open these stupid chips."

He walked over to her and deliberately plucked the bag of chips from her hand, tearing them smoothly open and dropping them back in her lap.  "Go ahead."

She shook her head and tossed them in the general direction of the trash can nearby.  They landed on the floor, flattening with a loud crackle of packaging.

"WNBA, look out," he said.

Elizabeth rolled her eyes.  He noticed that her hair was frizzing out of the restraints of her bun, and reached out to smooth a lock hanging down by her cheek, brushing it back behind her ear.  She closed her eyes for a moment, disarmed.  His breath and everything he'd been about to say left him.  God, even like this, tired and messy and a little sad, she was so beautiful it hurt.

After a moment he dropped his hand.  "You know," he said slowly.  "I've never been much for other people.  I like cutting, slicing, fixing things – surgery.  It's a field where you _know_ the answers, you know when you've won and when you've lost."

"It's tidy," she agreed.

"Right."  He thought she probably knew what he meant.  She did the same thing, Elizabeth, always running after men who were so much less than she was.  Carefully he tilted her chin up to look at him.  "I had no idea this was coming, but it did.  And I wasn't ready."

She tilted her head, her eyes flicking down to his lips.  "And now?"

For answer, he took her face in two hands and kissed her.

After a startled moment, she kissed back, making a small sound of pleasure or pleading.  He leaned down over her, supporting his weight with one hand gripping the plastic seatback behind her.  She slid her hand around his neck, her fingers cool and soft on the skin just under his collar.  He kissed her again, softer this time, gently opening her mouth.

Some minutes later, when his free hand brushed the right side of her neck, she winced and jerked back.

"What?"

"Seatbelt burn," she murmured.

They paused, a little awkward.  He found his eyes irresistibly drawn to her lips, but instead he straightened up.  Her hand slid easily off his neck and dropped to her lap.

Elizabeth nodded to the door.  "Time to get out of here?"

"Yeah, about twenty-four-hours past time," he said.

"Tell me about it," she said.  "I haven't slept since yesterday morning."

"You want me to call you tomorrow?" he asked uncertainly.

"No, no, let's get dinner at least," she said.

He lifted his eyebrows at the last two words.

"Oh, stop," she said, half reproving, half amused, and kissed him quickly after she'd stood up.  "Your car went to the shop, right?"

"Don't remind me," he groaned.  "My most vivid memory from that whole thing is how my poor Jag looked after you were through with it."

"It's not so bad," Elizabeth said.  "You can share the trains with the hoi polloi or whatever, just this once, can't you?"

Laughing, he walked her out the doors and stepped out of the hospital, into the summery evening outside.

~

When Mark woke, he thought that his eyes weren't open.  It was dark, very dark, the way sleep was.

Consciousness jerked at his muscles, and a warm weight became apparent on his hand.  It was Susan's fingers.  Gingerly, he reached to the dark blurry shape of her head.  She was sitting in the same chair, her head bent down to rest on the covers by his side.  It must be uncomfortable.

When he brushed his fingers over her short choppy locks of hair, she murmured, "You awake?"

"What time is it?" he murmured, as he always did.

"Late," she said.

"Did I wake you up?"

"No, I wasn't sleeping," she said.  "Just watching."

"In the dark."

"Sure, it's atmospheric," she kidded him, her voice very tired.

"Where did everyone go?"

"Rachel is in bed, and Chloe and Suzie went home.  It's just you and me."  She paused.  Out of the silence, a thin strain floated towards them.  Mark's dormant parental instincts sounded the alarm as he recognized the distant sound of Ella crying, but it was Susan who rose.  "And Ella, now."  As she walked towards the door, he heard her mutter, "I told Chloe it was a bad idea to put her to bed so early."

A few seconds later, Susan came back holding Ella, and settled down in the chair again, with the baby in her lap.  Ella was already quiet; she had grown attached to Susan quickly, although she sometimes still asked for her Mama, on those nights when there was thunder, when Elizabeth always rocked her and sang her the same worn verses of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."

But tonight, Ella was curled against Susan's lap, her chubby arms around Susan's neck.  Mark ran the back of his hand down her back.  "Hey Ella," he whispered thickly.

She whimpered, too drowsy to really cry.  Susan rocked and rocked and rocked, but the whimpering continued.  Finally Mark started singing, forcing the notes out past the pain it caused to breathe.  It wasn't Elizabeth's song but a different one he'd heard on the radio, this morning after Susan left.  "And I'd give up… forever… to touch you—" he rasped.

Susan smiled and joined in.  "'Cause I know that you'd feel me somehow," they sang together.

Mark gave up after his voice faded to a croaking whisper.  Susan kept crooning, in Ella's ear, "You're the closest to heaven, that I'll ever be…"

He closed his eyes as Susan kept singing, her voice as soft as the hand that reached out to take his.  After a few more lines Ella stopped whimpering, and Susan trailed off.

"She's sleeping," she whispered.

"Don't put her back in her crib just yet," Mark said.

"Maybe we'll just sleep here."

"That can't be comfortable."

"I did it all the time with Suzie."  Susan paused.  "God, though, Ella's heavy."

"Hey, she's not that big," Mark said.

"Yes she is," Susan giggled.  "I was a chubby baby, but not this chubby."  Ella made a soft contented noise and settled more comfortably against Susan.  "Or this cute," Susan added, kissing Ella's forehead affectionately.

"Oh, I don't believe that," Mark said.

"You should see the pictures before you judge that."

"You have to show me them, sometime," he said.

"Yeah," she agreed.  "Someday I'll bring you some pictures."

"I'm sure," he mumbled, "I'm sure you've always been beautiful.  Always."

The moonlight was dim, but bright enough to illuminate the liquid blonde of Ella's hair and the smile on Susan's face.  Mark held onto that image as he felt another wave of drowsiness wash over him and seduce him back into sleep.

~

Elizabeth had begun to feel like a teenager.

"How far till we get off this thing?" Romano murmured, as they sat tensely still next to each other.  He hadn't laid a hand on her since they'd stepped outside, in public, which was why she felt like she was sixteen and on her first date, desperately wondering about the kiss at the end of the night.  They'd grabbed a quick dinner at Doc's, and then gotten on the El, where they sat too close and too far apart.

"Thirty seconds," she shrugged as the train started slowing down at her stop.

"We're a little old to do the whole public display of affection thing," he muttered, "but I swear if it had been one more minute I couldn't keep my hands off you."

She stood, and he looked up at her with a little motion of the jaw as if he wanted to kiss her right then and there.  "I know what you mean," she said with a smile.

He stood next to her.  "Is that an invitation?"

"Yes, for a coffee at my house," she said coolly.

"Huh," he said, feigning chagrin.  "Now, where's your apartment?"

They stepped off the train, onto the platform.  Elizabeth nodded to the nearby building, her new home.  "There.  A three minute walk."

"Must get loud, so near the station."

"But no taxi fare," she said.  "It works for me."

They took the walk in near silence, walking very close; she liked this new silence, alive and crackling, and warm.  At her building, she said quietly, "Here it is."

"Not too shabby," he approved.

The elevator was already open to the lobby, which was deserted to weeknight stillness, only a security worker lolling sleepily backwards in his chair.  Elizabeth stepped into the small, lushly carpeted car first, and Romano followed her, his eyes directly meeting hers in anticipation.  "What floor?" he murmured, and she pressed the button for "28."

The doors closed.  She looked up and noticed vaguely that the ceiling of the car was made up of a bright sharp mirror, before stepping into his arms.

Somehow they got up to her floor and to her apartment through a messy, hasty kiss, all hands and lips and tongue and clumsiness.  She fumbled in her purse for her key without letting go of him, and they stumbled through the door and into the darkened hallway of a flat that was still unfamiliar to her, anonymous, undecorated.

She reached behind her with one hand and flicked on the light.

Startled, Robert backed away, blinking, disoriented.  The sounds of their unsteady breaths bounced along the bare walls.  He looked around, into the den, where the hall light was softly stealing along the outlines of starkly arranged couches, a table that would someday hold a television set, a coffee table without books.  The carpet and the walls were light-colored, the furniture dark in contrast.  

She felt embarrassed.  "I haven't had time to settle in."

It looked like she wasn't planning to stay; like a hotel room, awash in impermanence.  She knew what he was thinking, but he nodded noncommittally.  Elizabeth walked by and flicked on the main light.  The kitchenette became visible beyond.

Robert touched his thumb to the bags under her eyes.  "Long day, huh."

"Long _two_ days," she corrected him tiredly.  "It felt like a week."

"You're not kidding."

She blinked lazily, and his voice returned to its normal comforting brusqueness as he said, "I'll get that coffee, I assume you keep the proper implements in the kitchen over there?"

"And the cups are in the cupboard over the sink," she added, too tired to play the proper host, and then went into the family room and sank into the black leather couch, the one that faced the spot where the TV would go when she got around to buying one.  The slippery soft cushions cradled her exhausted body, and she was enveloped by a lovely warm drowsy feeling.

"I can only find instant coffee," Robert called from the kitchen.

"That's all I have at the moment," she retorted languidly, too sleepy to come up with anything witty.

As Robert prepared the coffee without addressing more words to her, Elizabeth listened to the water running, the kettle hissing, the cupboard doors squeaking open and closed.  Comforting sounds.  He belonged here, she thought.  They both belonged, finally, in this new dark and alien place, in this rough-edged, sparsely furnished corner of the world that wasn't a home yet but could be.

She turned her head slightly, towards the window.  This high up, the stars were clear beyond the polluted air of the city.

A small noise attracted her attention, and she looked back to the arched passage between den and kitchenette, where Robert was standing with two mugs in hand.  She smiled, and he came to her, and his lips were soft on her mouth and neck as he slid the untouched cups of coffee onto the table beside the couch.  They'd drink later.

Someday she would tell him what she had been thinking in that moment, about stars and home and him, and love.  Someday, when she had the words.

-the end-


End file.
